Design Centre key to company success
Plexus Corp., the Product Realization Company, yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the opening of its Design Centre in Livingston and celebrated the success of the past decade.
Plexus opened its Design Centre in Livingston in June 2002 to provide engineering solutions to technology companies in the UK and Europe. Starting as a small operation with just six employees, today there are 37 members of the team with five of the original group remaining.
Over the past 10 years, the facility has expanded three times, most recently in early 2012, accommodating the growth in business and for both larger electronic laboratory space and a new mechanical laboratory.
“It’s great to see our UK design operations growing strongly at a time of fierce international competition and in a challenging economic environment” comments Peter Winnington-Ingram, Senior Site Director at Plexus’ Livingston Design Centre. “We are committed to continuing to advance our engineering capabilities and working closely with our manufacturing operations to deliver optimised Product Realization solutions to our customers as a single, integrated accountable partner.”
Today, the Design Centre hosts a multi-functional design team that covers industrial design, mechanical, software, hardware (digital & analogue) engineering, and PCB design disciplines. The Livingston Design Engineers form part of the Plexus global design team with over 350 engineers worldwide that are focused on solving problems for its regional customers.
The design operations in Livingston are closely linked to Plexus’ manufacturing facilities in Kelso, making the company a single integrated partner to add value at every stage from concept design, product development to manufacturing.
In the past ten years, the team has become renowned for offering innovative design solutions that lead to manufacturable products within four specific sectors in the mid-low volume, higher complexity market place. These sectors include medical, industrial/commercial, defence/security/aerospace and networking/communications. Following Plexus’ US Design Centres, the facility in Livingston achieved the ISO 9001 accreditation in 2005, the internationally recognised standard for the management of a quality management system. It also holds ISO 13485 certifications, which are a crucial requirement for a comprehensive management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices.