MarkLines Co., Ltd. announced today that it has reached an agreement with Munro & Associates, Inc. USA. Munro & Associates will contribute benchmarking and quality data to the MarkLines web portal to add value and unique data to its existing services. MarkLines will perform sales agent functions for Munro by promoting its benchmarking data to MarkLines’ corporate members.

MarkLines President & CEO, Makoto Sakai, said “We believe this alliance offers major synergies between our companies and will bring great benefits to our expanding client base by adding value to our website and by giving out customers in the Japanese automotive industry access to data from a renowned benchmarking organization.”

”We are very excited about becoming the first benchmarking center supplying data to industry leader MarkLines,” said Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates. “We look forward to developing our relationship with MarkLines and supporting their subscribers with the unique Munro insights and data from our benchmarking process.”

Mr. Sandy Munro CEO of Munro & Associates	Mr. Makoto Sakai CEO of MarkLines

About MarkLines
MarkLines is the world’s leading on-line strategic automotive portal and B2B gateway that supports the development of business strategies and new global opportunities for OEMs, suppliers, and other participants within the automotive industry. MarkLines provides strategic market data, proprietary and custom B2B e-marketing solutions, customized market research, and actionable business intelligence. Its websites (www.marklines.com) are published in Japanese, English, and Chinese.

Founded in Japan in 2001, MarkLines has maintained rapid growth and today has over 2,300 corporate members and nearly 220,000 users worldwide. MarkLines is headquartered in Tokyo and has further offices in Detroit, Shanghai, Bangkok, Frankfurt and New Delhi.

About Munro & Associates
Founded in 1988, Munro & Associates, Inc. is a world class engineering consulting firm based in Auburn Hills, Mich. with offices in Europe, Canada, Australia, Korea and China. The firm specializes in upfront, predictive methods to increase profitability by improving quality, reliability and value, while reducing total lifecycle costs. The Munro team delivers in depth knowledge in product design, manufacturing, quality and technologies from a broad selection of industries. For more information, visit www.leandesign.com.

Munro & Associates employs a unique and in depth benchmarking method which supplies customers with data that is not available elsewhere on the market. Munro has a 29 year pedigree of delivering leading edge design and manufacturing ideas to its customers as a result of its techniques spanning most manufacturing industries across the globe.

For Media Related Enquiries, contact:
MarkLines: Mr. Masatoshi Kikkawa +81 3 5785 1385 kikkawa@marklines.com

Munro & Associates: Mr. Alistair Munro +1 647 300 8898 Alistair@leandesign.com

MarkLines co., Ltd. Aoyama Tower Place 2F, Akasaka 8-4-14, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052 Japan
Phone: +81 (3) 5785-1380; Fax +81 (3) 5785-1370

Email: kikkawa@marklines.com