ICEM Appoints Dean Franks as Vice President, Global Distributor Operations

ICEM Appoints Dean Franks as Vice President, Global Distributor Operations to Expand ICEM Into New Territories Around the World

Southampton, UK. 29 May 2003
Ref. NDM 688/03.

ICEM Ltd. announced today that it has appointed Dean Franks to the new position of vice president, global distributor operations. Franks joins ICEM from EDS where he was the EMEA distributor manager for the companys PLM Solutions line of business.

Franks will manage the companys existing network of 12 distributors covering Asia, EMEA and the Americas and will expand this to 24 over the next 18 months. Considerable business potential already exists within the local automotive industries in China, Russia, Scandinavia and India for the ICEM Surf surface modeling, analysis and visualization software suite.

ICEM distributors will be appointed to expand and support the companys customer base within the automotive industrys Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier community. Additionally, ICEM will continue to have direct contact with the major automotive OEMs around the world. The company currently counts 36 OEMs among its customers.

With a BS in mechanical engineering from Nottingham, UK, Franks served an indentured apprenticeship as a design engineer on an EITB-approved training scheme at Rose Forgrove, before embarking on his career within the IT industry. He was an application sales engineer and then international business manager at Pafec Ltd. where he spent two years in Asia. He also was employed as a senior sales consultant at Open Solutions Ltd.

He joined EDS PLM Solutions in 1992 as a senior account manager, where he was responsible for selling complete product development and manufacturing systems into an engineering client base. He was later promoted to sales manager, aerospace and defense sector and then to northern area sales manager where he successfully headed a team of five people.

About ICEM Ltd.
With its headquarters on Chilworth Science Park near Southampton on the UKs south coast, ICEM Ltd. is an independent company specializing in the development, sales and support of advanced software for use in the design and development of a products visible and underlying supporting surfaces. The companys software development group is based in Germany, while it has a network of sales and support offices and specialist distributors covering continental Europe, the USA and the Asia Pacific region.

The companys principal market sector is the worldwide automotive industry, where it includes most of the leading manufacturers among its customers, including the Ford Motor Company, DaimlerChrysler Group, Volkswagen Audi Group, Porsche, BMW, PSA Peugeot Citroën and Harley Davidson among others, as well as leading automotive industry suppliers such as Volke, EDAG, Pininfarina, Bertone, Mayflower and Thyssen Kruppe, among many others. The company also has a significant presence in the consumer durable products design market, with customers such as Wilson Sporting Goods, Rossignol, Ping, WMF and Toto among them.

Editorial contacts:
Kate Mills,
Tel: +44 (0) 2380 768088, e-mail: kate.mills@icem.com or
Neil McLeod,
Tel: +44 (0) 1666 504293, e-mail: neil_mcleod@compuserve.com