CANTON, Mass., Jan. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NEI (Nasdaq: NENG), today announced that William O'Connell has been promoted to the post of vice president of manufacturing operations, responsible for direct planning, organization and implementation of all manufacturing operations supporting NEI's strategic goals and objectives. With more than 30 years of experience in operations, manufacturing and supply chain management, Mr. O'Connell has an outstanding record of increasing productivity, customer satisfaction and operational excellence. Prior to this position, Mr. O'Connell served as director of NEI's high-volume manufacturing. In his new role, Mr. O'Connell will direct NEI's manufacturing efforts and activities, including capacity planning, scheduling and order fulfillment. He will report to Rich Graber, NEI senior vice president of engineering and operations.

Before joining NEI in April 2000, Mr. O'Connell was a new product program manager at Compaq Computer Corporation. Previously Mr. O'Connell worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for 22 years in positions of increasing responsibility in operations and program management. Mr. O'Connell holds a BSBA from the University of Delaware and has completed law degree courses at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He holds a Certificate in Production and Inventory Control (CPIM) from APICS.

"Bill has a broad operations background including his experience here at NEI," said Rich Graber. "His experience in volume manufacturing combined with product quality and cost control will allow us to provide consistent processes across our three manufacturing sites. Bill's experience with complex and demanding programs will help strengthen NEI's capabilities as we now address larger manufacturing and integration programs."

NEI maintains multiple manufacturing sites and can scale its production capabilities to meet any low-, medium- or high-volume production need. The company's production engineers and assembly technicians are highly trained to build a wide variety of systems, from single-processor appliances to highly complex ATCA platforms.

About NEI

NEI is a leading provider of application platform solutions and support services for software developers, OEMs and service providers worldwide. Through its comprehensive suite of services that include solution design, integration control, support and other value-added service capabilities, NEI enables its customers to more effectively deploy, manage and support their application platform and appliance solutions to their customers. Founded in 1997, NEI is headquartered in Canton, Massachusetts and trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol NENG. For more information about NEI's products and services, visit www.nei.com.

    Lisa Cliver                 Nancy Pieretti
    NEI                         Davies Murphy Group
    972-633-3491                781-418-2424
    lisa.cliver@nei.com         npieretti@daviesmurphy.com

SOURCE NEI