By Sebastian Huelck – CEO at tec5USA
Contract manufacturing has a rich history that most executives and engineers are completely unaware of. Its novel background actually originated here in the United States. Interestingly enough, it began in the dawn of the space age with an entrepreneurial idea sparked by Olin King, a Huntsville, Alabama business man. In King’s basement, King and two friends founded Space Craft Inc. (SCI) in 1961, which built satellites and communications gear for NASA, the U.S. Navy, and other government agencies.
When government funding dried up in the early 1970’s, King realized he had to pivot to survive. He took advantage of the relationships he had forged with OEMs while working on the space programs and decided to leverage all the capabilities in his tool box. With people, processes, and systems already established, King went to large companies like IBM and offered to build whatever they needed. IBM took him up on the offer and…