On Thursday, May 05, 2011, Mr. Frank Guimond, Hamilton Sundstrand Operations Director for Energy, Space, and Defense, and Mr. Gary Cronin, Hamilton's Quality \ ACE Manager for Space Systems, visited Flexial Corporation's Cookeville, TN facility to present the organization with an award recognizing Flexial's successful implementation of the Ito Quality Clinic.

Yuzuru Ito was the founder of Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE) and Ito University, established by United Technologies Corporation (UTC) as a material means to create a network to educate and promote Quality, Lean, and Positive Thinking Philosophies. The Quality Clinic is one of the major tool sets leveraged to drive continuous improvement and Total Quality Management. Flexial's commitment to implementation is a testament not only to their competitive excellence, but to their commitment to customer satisfaction. Led by Flexial engineers Seth Johnson, Jamie Terral, and Jarrod Goodwin, Flexial executed the Ito Quality Clinic process exceptionally well, effectively integrating it into its own systems underpinned by Flexial's web-based Business Management System, FlexNet. According to Mr. Guimond of Hamilton Sundstrand, Flexial was their division's first supplier to achieve the award.

Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems International, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp., is a world leader in designing and building space-qualified equipment. Hamilton Sundstrand Space Systems has not only supplied the Apollo lunar space suit portable life support system and the Lunar Module environmental control system, but also produces the space suit for NASA space walks and has a number of mission critical subsystems on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS).

Flexial Corporation, a member of the global BOA Group and based in Cookeville, Tennessee, is a key supplier to Hamilton Sundstrand, providing highly engineered edge-welded metal bellows, accumulators, reservoirs, and other products for fluid management applications onboard numerous space systems, including the International Space Station.

With some 20 subsidiaries and shareholdings in eleven countries as well as sales and service offices in strategic industrial countries, the BOA Group is one of the world's leading manufacturers of flexible mechanical elements for the automotive industry and for a wide range of industrial applications. The BOA Group develops, produces and distributes worldwide stainless steel components for motor management, exhaust systems and side components for vehicles. In the industrial division, the BOA Group delivers gas tight and flexible elements for applications in energy technology and technical construction: railway, shipyards, vacuum technologies, measurement and control and a host of other applications.

Acquired by the BOA Group in 2011, Flexial Corporation adds advanced aviation, space, and defense technologies to the Group's already broad spectrum footprint in the automotive, energy, industrial, and construction business sectors.