March 30th, 1993

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Milt Habeck was Controller of the Americas Region for Johnson Wax during a critical period for the Brazilian subsidiary. Inflation was almost constantly in the range of 15 - 20% per month and demand was very erratic. We were losing money and went deeply into debt.

Inflation is even higher today and demand continues erratic, but we have a very healthy financial situation and have made significant dividend payments. We have learned how to do business in this environment and are consistently in the top 5% of Brazilian companies in terms of return on shareholder investment. (Our competitors have reported losses year after year.)

I attribute our turn around to the quality of our management information and to dramatic improvements in planning and control of our inventories and manufacturing operations. Milt was a leader in identifying our critical needs and in making the improvements happen.

Our management information is all provided in "present value constant currency". It is hard to overemphasize the impact this had had on the quality of our operational decision making. Just one example: At our current inflation rate a one-day delay in order input reduces the real value of the sale by one percent. Our salesmen's results are impacted by any such delay. Since they understand the phenomena and see the consequences, they make every effort to get the orders in as quickly as possible.

A similar one percent loss occurs for every day that an order is out-of-stock. This gave us every incentive to become as efficient as possible in Manufacturing. We are closing in on class A status on the Oliver Wight checklist and, as a result, suffer very little out-of-stocks.

Milt brought us the constant currency concepts and has become an excellent teacher of MRP II. These have been very successful in Brazilian Johnson. I recommend them to you and I know no one better than Milt to help you implement them successfully.

Stephen Pease
Finance Director
CERAS JOHNSON LTDA