CARGILL SALT USES INFORMANCE FOR MANUFACTURING ANALYTICS

Salt business of international food and agricultural provider driving strategic plant improvements with EMI leader.

MINNEAPOLIS, MN and REDWOOD CITY, CA — January 22, 2007 — Cargill, Incorporated’s Salt business unit announced today that it is using The Informance Plant Solution to accelerate its manufacturing performance. Cargill Salt is also drawing on Informance’s expertise to compound productivity gains, support equipment reliability initiatives and maximize assets across their many plant sites throughout the U.S.

Using Informance, Cargill Salt quickly identified and prioritized production improvement opportunities to increase sprint capacity during peak production seasons. The enhanced visibility for process improvement enabled operations management to take decisive action that aligned with the company’s overall reliability initiatives.

"With Informance, we can now quickly identify opportunities for improving efficiency at our manufacturing facilities. This is helping us reduce operating costs and improve production," commented Jim Heard, Assistant Vice President of the Cargill Salt business unit. "Informance’s enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) solution tackles complex plant analysis, yet is easy for our operations professionals to use — helping us build momentum toward continuous improvement and reliability initiatives."

Cargill Salt used Informance’s implementation methodology for fast speed-to-value and planned the rollout at a rate of one plant per week. Operations management started seeing reports and improvements right away as the rollout progressed.

"Cargill Salt and Informance set very aggressive goals for their manufacturing improvement activities," comments Sunil Singh, CEO and President of Informance International. "Cargill Salt leveraged the partnership and exceeded original expectations by unlocking hidden production capacity."