Plexus Corp NASDAQ: PLXS, is an Electronics Manufacturing Services provider to the wireline/networking, wireless infrastructure, medical, commercial and defense/security/aerospace industries. With headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin, Plexus has engineering and manufacturing facilities in China, Malaysia, Mexico, Scotland, Romania, and the United States.

Plexus was incorporated in Wisconsin in 1979 and began operations in 1980. The company was founded by Peter Strandwitz, John Nussbaum, and a group of other entrepreneurs, interested in a venture to design and build computer circuit boards by contract. Located in the eastern Wisconsin city of Neenah, on Lake Winnebago, the new company found the bulk of their early work through contracts with IBM.

The business grew, and by 1987, Plexus reported revenues of $24.5 million. However, the company also reported a net loss of $1.3 million. Turnaround was quick, and the next year the company saw revenues of $53.2 million and net income of $393,000, a dramatic increase in sales of 117 percent. To effect this change, management had cut operating expenses as a percentage of sales by 50 percent. The company's stock, then traded over-the-counter, responded in 1989 by nearly doubling in the first six months. Sales in 1989 again rose substantially to $78.1 million.

By the end of the 1980s Plexus had organized its business among three subsidiaries. One, Technology Group Inc., was headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, and focused on electronic product development and testing. The other two subsidiaries were the company's dual contract production units, Electronic Assembly Corp. and Electronic Assembly Inc., with facilities in Neenah as well as in Richmond, Kentucky.

In mid-1999 Plexus acquired SeaMED, a medically focused electronic design and manufacturing services provider in the Seattle, Washington, area. The acquisition added 135 engineers and support personnel to the company's Design Center staff. SeaMED's customers included Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and Novoste. Later in the year Plexus acquired printed circuit board assembly production facilities in the Chicago area from Shure Inc. for the RF/wireless technology market.

In addition to expanding its research, development, and production capabilities, Plexus continued to develop new technologies. Late in 1999 the company announced it had designed an inexpensive radio module that allowed computers to communicate by radio wave from ten miles apart, compared to ten feet permitted by current technology. In addition, the high frequency wireless band used in this new technology could send 10 to 20 times the amount of data that existing systems could handle. The technology also allowed computers within the confines of a building to communicate several hundred feet apart. Using this technology computers would be able one day to communicate directly with one another in real time while bypassing all wired infrastructures.

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