Content area
Full text
With a new building and equipment set, Leda is preparing to take Off. by CHELSEY DRYSDALE
When Boeing (boeing.com) needs prototype assemblies, it jets on down to Leda Corp. (ledacorp.net), an aerospace design and PCB assembly firm located in the middle of Surf City USA.
There, in a cluster of innocuous white buildings in Huntington Beach, CA (Surf City is the town's registered name), Leda operates a batch assembly line in a small footprint. But that's all about to change.
President Joseph Tung and family - vice president (and son) David, and wife, Dorothy - own and operate Leda, a nearly 25-year-old firm that has been expanding steadily, if not rapidly, since it moved to this site in 2004.
The Tungs bought a second building on the campus in 2005 and a third nearby in 2006. And as construction workers diligently laid concrete and workers pieced together new equipment, Joseph Tung's vision for the site would be realized in a matter of weeks.
Inside the 6,000 sq. ft. Building 2, an empty space in the floor marked where a new line would soon run. When a Circuits Assembly reporter visited the company in June, the new building was about 80% complete, and equipment was to be installed later that month. The staff numbers about 25, and once the site is finished the company plans to hire two or three more.
For Leda - the name comes from the first two letters of Joseph's daughter, Leslie, and son David - it marks the culmination of a process four years in the making.
As David Tung explains, Leda is a small-volume, high-mix shop. "We do a lot of specialty jobs,...