Adept Technology Inc., a provider of production automation products, said today it plans to cut its work force by 15 percent and to close its Quebec and Southbury, Conn., facilities "due to North American market erosion" and to cut costs as part of its planned restructuring, announced earlier this week. The plan will also involve reducing its leased space at its Livermore, Calif., headquarters and consolidating its software development activities there and its US sales and service operations at its new technical center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Adept also has a US facility in Pineville, N.C., in addition to European and Asia/Pacific locations. It said it will relocate some of its US operational work force to Europe in order to "accelerate positive market momentum." Other restructuring measures will include realignment of its North American sales organization to focus on the life sciences and packaged goods industries; transfering and consolidating sales coverage of the disk drive/electronics market to its Singapore office; and dontinued outsourcing of its manufacturing operations for standard products. Adept also announced that Steven Moore, Adept's vice president of finance and chief financial officer, has accepted a position with another company and will resign effective in mid-July. It said it is considering alternatives for his replacement. John Dulchinos was promoted to president and COO. CEO Robert Bucher "will continue to focus on leading Adept's strategic initiative to explore and develop new opportunities to grow and diversify the company's business, both through the transition of the company's business into high-growth emerging markets and through external partnerships and acquisitions," Adept said in a statment. "We appreciate Steve's contributions in developing the finance team and implementing the systems to strengthen the operational and accounting functions that are critical to our financial reporting," said Bucher. "We wish him well in his future endeavors." Dulchinos joined Adept in 1987 and was most recently vice president of global sales and marketing, responsible for developing Adept's vertical market sales strategy focusing on the packaged goods, life sciences, disk drive/electronics and semiconductor industries. Also, Joachim Melis was promoted to vice president, worldwide sales. He was formerly vice president sales, Europe. Adept said its planned restructuring is intended to lower fixed operating costs and redistribute sales and engineering resources to more quickly grow its target vertical markets while maintaining momentum in key existing markets. Adept said it expects to incur restructuring charges of approximately $1.6 million, of which the majority relate to facility closure and lease terminations, and that approximately $1.2 million of these charges will be recorded in the fourth quarter, ending June 30. Consolidation of software development activities at the Livermore facility "is expected to have an impairment impact on the goodwill on Adept's balance sheet, and Adept is currently reviewing that impact," it added. As of March 31, Adept had approximately $3.2 million of goodwill related to the acquisition of HexaVision in 2000 and META in 2002. "The rebalancing of our sales resources will enable Adept to optimize our current sales levels with new channels and redeploy direct salespeople to emerging high-growth markets," said Bucher.For more information, visit: www.adept.com