Hewlett-Packard Closes Historic Production Line

An important chapter in Spokane’s high-technology history came to a close Thursday as Hewlett-Packard shut down its signal generator production line.

At 3 p.m., the line that produces HP’s signal generator family of products shut down for good.

That product group is what brought HP to Spokane in 1979.

“We estimate that the revenue produced from that line here since 1979 has been more than $1 billion,” said Liz Cox, an HP spokesperson in Spokane.

Since the fall of 1991, though, HP has been gradually shifting production of its signal generator products to a plant in Sonoma County, Calif., where the company’s Microwave Instrument Division is being consolidated. At the same time, it has focused production in Spokane on its radio frequency communications products.

“Radio communications is very much a growth area for this company,” Cox said. “These are products we are selling to cellular phone manufacturers, like Motorola, and cellular service providers, like the baby Bells and Sprint.”

Cox said about 60 HP employees who still worked in the signal generator area have been shifted to other assignments within the Spokane operation. A group of temporary employes, however, will not retain their jobs with HP.

HP contracts with a company called Volt to provide temporary contract workers here.

“We’ve run anywhere from 80 to 180 Volt contract employees here at any one time for the past two years,” said Lori Crump, Volt’s program manager at HP. “That number has been at 150 for the past six months, and I anticipate that will decrease by about 30 this month.”

Crump said most of the displaced Volt employees will be shifted to work at other companies that use Volt to provide contract labor.

Both the signal generator products and the radio frequency products are testing instruments used in the microwave and cellular industries respectively.

HP has been consolidating its operations in cost-cutting measures in recent years. It is in the process of shutting down a plant in Boise that employed more than 1,000. Many of those workers will lose their jobs.

But Cox said the future of HP’s Spokane operations is strong.

The company employs about 880 people in Spokane. She said about a dozen of the displaced Boise workers will be relocated here.

“They are experienced technicians and we will be glad to get them,” she said. “And the future of our operations here looks very solid.”

, DataTimes