Below are a few of the contract manufacturing companies in industry offering military and defense eletronics contract manufacturing outsourcing services.
- Benchmark Electronics
- Celestica
- Plexus
- Sanmina-SCI
The military and defense market is attractive to North American prime contractors (OEMs such as Boeing, Raytheon, or Northrop Grumman, which in turn, contract with the United States Department of Defense (DoD)) because the security implications associated with electronics used in the military being built in large quantities by foreign-owned companies, overseas. Additionally, there is a motivation for U.S. elected officials to help ensure tax dollars are allocated predominantly in the U.S.
Contract manufacturers choosing to offer services to prime contractors must have strong quality and traceability protocols in place, among other strict requirements.
Noteworthy difficulties contract manufacturers face with the military and defense electronics outsourcing market can inlcude large capital invesmtents if the contract manufacturer does not have a history of building products in the sector; low quantity/high-mix product build programs that are economically challenging to service in difficult financial markets, and:
- longer product development cycle times
- multiple design iterations
- multiple quote requests
- risk of programs being cut from the Federal budget
VentureOutsource.com, May 2006
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