Wired Success

Information technology can promote the development and productivity of a business. That is why IT is a core competency at Liberty Electronics and plays a key role in satisfying our customers.  Rather than using off-the-shelf software, which is often a “jack of all trades and master of none,” Liberty employs a different approach. 

In the past, using commercial software applications has forced Liberty to make sacrifices and compromises due to the different limitations of these products, which ultimately was inefficient to the company. Instead, Liberty strategically customizes robust applications in order to achieve our customer-driven requirements as an electronic manufacturing services contract manufacturer. As customer and industry requirements evolve, our software also evolves through updates by our IT department. Our self-sufficient approach to IT ultimately reduces cost and lead-times, speeds up simple actions through automation, and improves customer service. Here are a couple of examples:

One way a company can support its community is by offering educational and employment opportunities to the members of the community, especially students. This is particularly true for companies, like Liberty Electronics, in the STEM field. By engaging with the community, the company can educate students about the field and equip them with opportunities for the future. Larger companies, such as Lockheed Martin, do this regularly. Liberty, though located in a smaller community, still offers valuable resources to the area through career, STEM, and mentorship programs to reach students and potential employees.

The autumn of 2001 found Liberty Electronics’ employees full of confidence in the future. Years of developing strong customer relationships and providing high quality products had solidified Liberty’s reputation within the manufacturing community. The company had built on this foundation by attaining the International Standard Certification ISO9001 three years previously, shifting from a narrow focus on military quality assurance to an international quality system that allowed its work to branch out into the global market. And employees looked forward to moving into their new facility in just a few months’ time, a space that would allow them to fulfill contracts for General Electric, Siemens, and their first international order for an Israeli tactical air-launched decoy designed to fool enemy radar systems.

Great accomplishments often have small beginnings, an idea with which Liberty Electronics is more than familiar. Once a business concept found only on paper for a university research project, by the early 1990s Liberty was a fully formed corporation coming into its own. The company had deliberately focused on defense programs since its 1986 founding, meeting a specific need during the late Cold War and the Gulf War to provide high quality wiring harnesses and cable assemblies to the defense industry. That, however, was all about to change.

In the spring of 1986, Liberty Electronics could look back on a wildly successful year. Its founders had taken the company from a research project to a living, breathing corporation. The community of Franklin, Pennsylvania, rose to the occasion to make this innovative new enterprise welcome, through financial backing and filling production team roles. Work was underway on various military contracts, such as the Navy’s CANTASS Towed Sonar Array and ADCAP torpedo and the Army’s Chinook helicopter.

After a pell-mell race to form a company, choose a site, and secure financing, Liberty Electronics started the new year of 1986 enthusiastically readying its Franklin building and marketing its products. The founders envisioned an innovative company working in state-of-the-art facilities to produce much-needed cable and wiring assemblies for military and commercial industries. They had materials and a sophisticated cleanroom environment in which to work. The next piece of the puzzle was the investment that continues to pay dividends to the current day—a well-trained, dedicated, local workforce.

The morning of February 17, 1986, dawned cool and rainy in Franklin, Pennsylvania. Despite the chill in the air and the fog hovering over French Creek, there was an undercurrent of excitement. After months of intense pressure, tight deadlines, and hundreds of man-hours of work, Liberty Electronics, the town’s newest business, was set to open in a gala event. Liberty offered Franklin and the nation a new solution to an old problem: manufacturing wiring components for military and commercial aerospace industries at the highest level of innovation and workmanship. An entire community came together to put this forward-thinking company on its feet. And now it was time to celebrate .