Date: January 1, 2006

CLEVELAND … The Airflex business unit of Eaton Corporation was honored as the recipient of the 2005 Frost & Sullivan North American Power Transmission Product Innovation of the Year Award.

Airflex demonstrated its innovative ability to address the unique needs of its customers by developing the 76VC clutch solution, a unique eight-foot (2.4 meters) diameter air actuated clutch for use in grinding mills in the mining industry. The 76 VC is able to transmit 7.3 million lb-inch of torque with 9500 horsepower at 200 rpm.The product is an industry first and can claim the largest drum clutch in the world, which makes it effective, reliable, and efficient.

Frost & Sullivan, a business-consulting firm, presented the award at a ceremony in Boston on July 19th, 2005. Accepting the award on behalf of Eaton were Garry Jennings (Global Sales Manager) and Joe Semaan (International Sales Manager). Ravi Kaushik (Market Manager) had submitted the entry to Frost & Sullivan and presented the details of the product offering to them.

Joe Semaan said, "This award truly reflects Airflex' leadership in delivering and capturing competitive distinctive value for our customers. We can feel proud that while the clutch and brake industry as a whole has largely treaded water, we have continued to innovate and create new and effective customer-focused solutions."

The mining industry had faced the challenge of maintaining profitability and managing operational margins especially during the extraction of minerals. To meet that need, the 76 VC clutch was conceived, developed and shipped out to the customer in record time of 5 months using Eaton PROLaunch, which followed a Phase-Gate Product Development approach that was utilized by a cross-functional team that met weekly during the concept development to ultimately making the end product.

In addition, all the unique features and benefits of the product and total cost of ownership to the customer were considered to value price & market (sell) the 76 VC clutch.

Ravi Kaushik said "This is a great example of using EBS and great tools like PROLaunch, value pricing & value selling to create a timely win-win solution for our customers Eaton Airflex."

Customers have provided outstanding feedback and are very satisfied with the existing installations of similar clutches (66 VC) for mineral processing applications. The first order of three 76 VC clutch systems were for a gold mine in Nevada.

Eaton Corporation is a diversified industrial manufacturer with 2005 sales of $11.1 billion. Eaton is a global leader in electrical systems and components for power quality, distribution and control; fluid power systems and services for industrial, mobile and aircraft equipment; intelligent truck drivetrain systems for safety and fuel economy; and automotive engine air management systems, powertrain solutions and specialty controls for performance, fuel economy and safety. Eaton has 60,000 employees and sells products to customers in more than 125 countries. For more information, visit www.eaton.com.