September 23, 2003 -- In response to the promotion of Ian Dinwoodie from operations director to chief executive, Xaar plc has split the former role of operations director to create two new director positions to cover manufacturing and engineering. Greg Lockett has been promoted to the position of director of manufacturing and Rob Welford has been promoted to director of engineering. These two new positions reflect the importance that Xaar places on ensuring the delivery of high quality inkjet printhead and inks to the growing inkjet market. In his new role as director of manufacturing, Greg Lockett, who will relocate to Sweden, will be responsible for all Group manufacturing activities in Sweden as well as the supervision of pilot and prototyping lines at Cambridge. He will ensure the Swedish facility continues to improve the effectiveness of its management system following on from the successful ISO 9001:2000 accreditation last year. In addition, he will continue to advance manufacturing operations and quality assurance procedures. Greg joined Xaar as operations and quality manager in 2002. Prior to this, he worked as deputy director of manufacturing at Fujifilm Electronic Imaging Ltd, running day-to-day operations at the company’s manufacturing site. Rob Welford, as the new director of engineering, will focus on design and development activities associated with both current and future printheads, and peripherals. His responsibilities include managing the Xaar ‘Quality Step’ programme to deliver manufacturing yield and customer quality improvements. He will also ensure the ink approvals programme is in line with the business plan and will assist with the introduction of a new business development process. Before joining Xaar as design and development manager earlier this year, Rob worked at Fujifilm Electronic Imaging Ltd, holding the a number of position of manufacturing engineering manager, where he was responsible for manufacturing and day-to-day engineering issuespositions including project manager for CTP product development. “The promotions recognise the dedication of two key employees that have made a significant contribution to the company in the relatively short time they have worked at Xaar,” comments Ian Dinwoodie, chief executive at Xaar. “The new roles reflect Xaar’s focus and commitment to being a leading high-tech manufacturer of digital inkjet technology. We can now ensure the continuous improvement activities in our design and manufacturing areas are accelerated in parallel.”