Chrystal Software Automates the Automotive Industry

[NMumford@chrystal.com]

CHRYSTAL SOFTWARE AUTOMATES DOCUMENT CREATION AND PUBLISHING FOR AUTOMOTIVE
INDUSTRY

DaimlerChrysler AG Reduced Content Authoring Costs by 50 Percent

	SAN DIEGO, Jan. 26, 2001 - Chrystal Software, a Xerox New Enterprise
Company, can revolutionize the way the automotive industry manages documents
and data - and industry giants such as DaimlerChrysler and Fiat are
demonstrating how.

DaimlerChrysler (NYSE: DAJ) and Fiat S.p.A. (NYSE: FIA) showed tangible
improvement in reducing costs and decreasing overhead after recently
implementing Chrystal's flagship document management program, Astoria®. 

	Fiat S.p.A. is a multibillion-dollar company headquartered in Turin,
Italy, and best known for its small, sporty cars. It incorporates 888
companies in 62 countries and employs more than 240,000 people. In addition
to automobiles, it produces airplanes, ships, trains, agricultural tractors,
construction machinery and other industrial products.
 
	Not surprisingly, Fiat placed huge demands upon its document
creation and management systems. With offices and production facilities
around the world, each generating reams of critical data, Fiat required a
system that permitted flexible but precise communication between distant
points and had the capacity to design and produce a range of
product-specific documents and precise, technical manuals. Accurate language
translation was also important since Fiat serves customers using dozens of
languages.

	Astoria from Chrystal Software met the challenge. Fiat implemented
an integrated document-management solution called Global Gate, which uses as
its foundation Astoria's object-oriented database design. Fiat is now able
to create reusable information components that are expected to substantially
reduce authoring costs and production time for the millions of pages of data
that Fiat produces or revises each year.

	Beyond that, Astoria offers SGML and XML capabilities that will
allow Fiat to grow and evolve in business since the company can now
distribute manuals over the Internet, via company intranets or extranets, on
CD-ROM, or on paper. 

	Meanwhile, Chrystal Software is helping customize service manuals
for MCC smart GmbH, a subsidiary of DaimlerChrysler AG, which is marketing a
new, ultra-small automobile called "the smart car." 

	The idea behind the smart car (just 8 feet long) is unprecedented.
MCC wanted to deliver a car that was highly customizable, but could be
produced within a few days of order. Plus, the company wanted subsequent car
service to be very "smart," with garages able to automatically recognize
individual cars and their particular customizations.

	To achieve these goals, MCC minimized the number of suppliers and
created an online system that creates exactly the documentation required at
the time of service for each car. More radically, the company decided not to
produce service manuals, but to create instead pools of reusable content.

	It works like this: Instead of creating one static, quickly
out-of-date service manual, MCC generates thousands of bits of data or
objects that can be added or deleted to create a unique but standardized
document for each car. As a result, authoring costs are measurably reduced
while production efficiencies are increased.
 
	"Using Chrystal software, we have reduced the authoring costs for an
automotive workshop manual by 50 percent," said Jean Hamilton, SPX Valley
Forge Technical Information Services, a Chrystal Software partner and
solution integrator.

	MCC went further by adopting XML/SGML standards and storing its
database in a highly adaptable content management system that will ensure
maximum flexibility in the future.  
  
Headquartered in San Diego, Chrystal Software focuses on delivering
high-performance content management for Web-based applications, as well as
traditional publishing and high-end, single-source authoring environments. 

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Customer and Media Contacts:
Nancy Mumford, Chrystal Software, nmumford@chrystal.com, 858-676-7791.
Marlee J Ehrenfeld, MJE Marketing Services, marlee@mjemarketing.com,
619-682-3841.