PRESS RELEASES

Tomerdingen (Germany) - For immediate release - March 14, 1998

Dr. Manuela Boin wins the the 2nd prize in the business plan competition "StartUp" in the region of Wuerttemberg. Dr. Doering, Minister for Economic Affairs of the State of Baden- Wuerttemberg, presented the award during a ceremony held in Stuttgart on March 13, 1998. He awarded the ten best business plans in the region. Dr. Doering rated all ten plans as special achievements and emphasized the importance of founding new industrial firms for creating new jobs in Germany.

"StartUp" is a nation-wide competiton of business plans initiated by the german magazine "Stern", the banking association Sparkasse and the consultants McKinsey & Company.

The plan entiteld "Development and Marketing of Software Products for the International Semiconductor Industry" describes the planned set up of a company offering products and service to equipment vendors, IC manufacturers and research institutes within the semiconductor industry. It was prepared by Dr. Manuela Boin and Andreas Tillmann. The development and marketing of the WAFERMAP software package is the basis for the company startup. The WAFERMAP software allows import of data files from different metrology tools such as ellipsometers and four point probes. The data can be visualized by contour plots, three-dimensional plots, line scans, histograms and others. Dr. Manuela Boin has already sold more than 80 licenses of the DOS version of WAFERMAP to semiconductor related companies.

A shareware version of the program can be downloaded at http://home.t-online.de/home/manuela.boin.

The new Windows 95 /NT version of WAFERMAP will be released soon. A number of companies has already expressed a strong interest in the product. Currently the beta version is under extensive testing at more than 20 customer sites mostly based in United States.

Contact:

Boin GmbH, Dr. Manuela Boin
E-Mail: info@boin-gmbh.com
Web: www.boin-gmbh.com
Tel: +49 (0) 7348-928233