-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
LaBarge's Tulsa Electronic Manufacturing Facility Generating Strong Sales
May 19, 2008 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Think of it as reverse polarity.
Ron Falk, general manager of LaBarge Inc. in Tulsa, has been in the electronic manufacturing services industry for 27 years and said their recent growth has been amazing, and running the opposite direction from most of the industry.
"It probably has gone opposite of the trend of domestic EMS companies," he said. "I think the last five to seven years have been the most challenging for EMS companies."
But LaBarge is emerging as one of the fastest-growing firms, reporting strong sales and expansion.
The firm's seven domestic facilities had $235.2 million in sales for 2007. The Tulsa branch generated $32 million in revenue, up 23 percent from the previous year.
LaBarge produces electronic products for military, space, commercial and industrial industries. The 50,000-square-foot Tulsa facility specializes in products that go into defense applications for military aircraft and radar systems. They concentrate on circuit board and electronic assemblies for several end uses.
"A very common theme with LaBarge is all our products have to have a high cost of failure - that is the kind of market we serve," he said. "We want to do the hard things, the things that are heavily engineered and have to work every single time. That is what is responsible for our growth."
Falk credits LaBarge's success to a trend among defense contractors and industrial companies opting not to do electronic assembly in-house, instead choosing to outsource and partner with companies like LaBarge.
"So we are benefiting from the sourcing trend because typically we have lower overhead and are more cost-competitive," he said.
"The products they have outsourced are heavily engineered and not typically lower-volume products and they are not candidates for moving offshore, so that has been a plus for us."
Recently Lockheed Martin, one of their biggest customers, awarded a $1.6 million contract to provide circuit card assemblies for a new radar system. Falk said the Tulsa branch will begin production on it later this year.
LaBarge has 1,420 employees, including 160 in Tulsa. In the past three years the Tulsa staff increased by 33 percent, and Falk said they will need to hire more in upcoming months.
In addition to defense applications, the Tulsa branch also oversees the oilfield services facility that was transferred from Houston several years ago. That operation outfits oilfield trucks with computerized equipment that helps monitor oil wells.
Rising gas prices have led to a projected 10- to 15-percent increase for that division.
"Because as gas prices and demand goes up there is more and more equipment needed to go out and get that oil," he said. "That's why they have pretty good growth over the last few years; it's been spurred by high oil prices."
Falk said because of LaBarge's continuing growth they have no reason to fear a troubled economy. He said they foresee the flow of products they produce for equipment in Afghanistan and Iraq will not slow even though operations there could wind down.
"We anticipate that our business will be strong because there are replacements needed for some of the equipment in the field, barring any major administration changes where the defense budget is slashed or something like that, which we don't see right now being on the horizon," Falk said.
Though many of their clients are not Tulsa-specific, Falk said the combination of a strong growth curve and supporting national defense makes LaBarge a significant employer in Tulsa.
"With Tulsa and the heavy aerospace industry ties and the fact that we support that market, a good bulk of our business goes into cable assemblies and jet engines," he said. "We are pretty integrated; we can do pretty much anything in electronics."Reprinted with permission from The Journal Record. For more information, or to see this article in its original format, visit www.JournalRecord.com.