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  MSA's Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS™) Publishes New "Northern US and Ontario, Canada" Region

PITTSBURGH, PA - December 29, 2008 - Management Science Associates, Inc.'s (MSA) Metals and Advanced Manufacturing Division has made an additional geographic boundary region available to participants in its Raw Material Data Aggregation Service™ (RMDAS). This new overlay "cross border" region, called the "Northern US & Ontario Region," will provide RMDAS participants with aggregated spot market ferrous scrap price and volume information for mills located in the eastern Michigan, northeastern Indiana, northern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, western New York, and southern Ontario, Canada markets. According to Ralph Pinkert, MSA's Metals Division Business Development Director, "In addition to our program's seven other geographic regions, RMDAS participants now have another important region in which they can comparatively review aggregated, transaction-based price and volume information for ferrous scrap commodities purchased by steel producers located within this cross border region each month."

RMDAS was developed in late 2003 with steel producers. Currently, MSA has contracts with a significant number of EAF mini-mills and integrated steel producers in North America, who provide their actual purchase order data from approximately 70 melting locations, which represent well over 55% of the total purchased scrap consumed in the United States each month.

MSA also publishes the RMDAS™ Ferrous Scrap Price Index in Recycling Today™ magazine (and on its website, RecyclingToday.com), and on MetalPrices.com and RMDASindex.msa.com. These prices published to the general public are limited to several widely traded scrap commodities, representing the regional spot prices for "prompt" new production industrial scrap generated by the metal working industry, shredded "obsolescent" scrap, and heavy melting "cut" scrap sold to domestic steel producers each month.

The published RMDAS™ Ferrous Scrap Price Index is the weighted average regional spot market prices generated from RMDAS participants' actual purchase order transactions. As the index is generated from a significant percentage of the market, and from actual transactions, periodic after-the-fact price corrections or restatements are not necessary. MSA's reliable, regional ferrous scrap price index enables companies in the steel, foundry, manufacturing, metalworking, and recycling industries to enter into more realistic formula-based, longer-term purchase and sales agreements, and/or to use as a raw material surcharge mechanism.

MSA's Metals and Advanced Manufacturing Division is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based group that specializes in providing complete turnkey computer systems, process control services, purchasing and blending optimization models, and facility-wide management systems to a variety of process and manufacturing industries. It is perhaps best known for its work in automating steel mills and its Raw Material Data Aggregation Service™ for steel scrap, but it also provides services for the chemical process, pulp and paper, and environmental services industries as well as applications for laboratory information management, business intelligence, and e-commerce. The Division has provided such services since 1982.

ABOUT MANAGEMENT SCIENCE ASSOCIATES, INC. (MSA)
Management Science Associates, Inc. engineers and commercializes information-based models, processes and systems for industry and government. Since being incorporated in 1963, MSA has partnered with customers to identify areas in which innovative analyses and uses of data can foster growth or drive efficiency. Combining its expertise with the tools of information management, analytics, data management, software and systems technology, MSA develops, integrates, implements and maintains products and services in various functional and vertical domains. It helps customers put their data to work. With more than 800 employees, MSA provides solutions for over 300 clients, including many of the largest U.S. and foreign corporations and institutions. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, it also has offices in New York; Chicago; High Point; Atlanta; Cardiff, UK; Shanghai, China; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

 

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