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Originally founded in 1954 by Mr. Hyman Smith, the company operated out of a small backroom at a plant on Hopkins Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company produced electronic test instruments used in testing for electrical defects in products. With a strong Milwaukee business connection, one of the company's first customers was Harnischfeger. Milwaukee Electronics provided hi-pot testing for the company and later circuit board assemblies for Harnischfeger's mining shovels. Mr. Smith also ran two other companies, the Milwaukee Transformer Company and Transformer Design Inc., and operated all three companies for 30 years until selling them to a holding company.
The businesses operated under the holding company until spinning off Milwaukee Electronics Corporation in 1985 when it was purchased by P. Michael Stoehr, an Electrical Engineer from the University of Nebraska. At the time of the acquisition, the company had a total of 23 employees and less than $500,000 in sales. Under Stoehr's leadership, the company transitioned from designing electrical circuitry to electronic engineering services. As customers continued to place more value on well-engineered products and products designed for manufacture, MEC continued to increase its focus on value-added engineering services. The company quickly outgrew the Hopkins Street location and moved to a 13,000-square-foot plant on Clinton Avenue in Milwaukee. Continuing growth allowed the company to move again, in 1991, to its current 63,000-square-foot location on Glen Park Road in Milwaukee. Recognizing the importance of offering customers multiple on-site contract manufacturing facilities, MEC purchased ECD located in Portland, Oregon, in 1999. This allowed the company to be closer to customers west of the Mississippi. THis acquisition created what is now MEC Northwest.
A third manufacturing facility was opened in Tecate, Mexico in 2003, offering a low-cost contract electronics assembly and manufacturing facility, bringing the total MEC manufacturing operations to 130,000 square feet. In 2003, MEC was on the move again. But this time expansion was via the Internet. The company established a full-service web site called ScreamingCircuits.com. The site offers instant PCB quoting, order management, secure file uploads and online order status. Offering quick-turn PCB assembly, Screaming Circuits completes short run prototype and production orders in 48 hours with only 24 hours notice. Today, Screaming Circuits is the market leader in providing innovative quick turn prototypes to the PCB industry.
Anticipating the move to new board technologies, MEC invested heavily in new surface mount equipment in 2001, and again in 2006. In 2001-2002 the company also expanded services in variable potting (encapsulation) and automated conformal coating. In 2003 MEC launched MEC Innovation, the product development and electronics design arm of the business, as a separate entity. The engineers of MEC Innovation are now located in Milwaukee, Portland and San Diego; some directly at customer sites.
Today, MEC employs in excess of 250 people, including project engineers, design engineers, test engineers, mechanical engineers and printed circuit board designers. Learn more about MEC's mission statement, quality policy, manufacturing processes and locations.
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Product Development
History 
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