Dynetics expanded its footprint in Cumming Research Park Thursday with the opening of the Dr. Stephen M. Gilbert Advanced Manufacturing Facility.

The 78,000 square-foot manufacturing and assembly facility is named for one of the company’s co-founders.

The state-of-the-art Gilbert Advanced Manufacturing Facility joins a Solutions Complex and the Dynetics Technical Solutions headquarters as the sixth building on the sprawling Dynetics campus. The new high mix/low volume production area is expected to hire more than 200 employees.

“We kept hearing that there was not a one-stop-shop where a project could be designed, prototyped and manufactured,” said Dynetics CEO David King. “We decided to put our mark on this ability … we are now able to accept the challenge from concept analysis and development through testing and production.”

The new facility offers five major production areas.

The first is a family of reconfigurable, short and long-range surveillance sensors for real-time situational awareness of critical infrastructure known as GroundAware.

In the automotive configuration and test equipment area, customers can develop vehicle testers and ship them to vehicle plants where they can be configured to test the electronics in a variety of vehicular models as they progress down the assembly lines.

New electronics manufacturingcapabilities will improve efficiency and cut by weeks, the production time a suite of avionics products and printed circuit boards can be built.

Additionally, skilled technicians and engineers can provide and test cable harness solutionsfor aerospace and defense partners; and in the final product assembly of large and small systems area, Dynetics can now bring together electrical and mechanical components, and build complete systems in a single production area.

The expanded manufacturing capabilities will increase current production volume while also offering classified manufacturing; and government and industry customers can now complete final assembly and test for a wide variety of Dynetics products from small system components to full weapon systems.

“I am incredibly proud of our team for having the foresight to create a facility that will be unique and adaptable to our customers’ needs,” said King. “For years, we have wanted to fill a manufacturing niche where we can provide a smaller quantity of products while getting them into market in an efficient manner.

“Once we knew that we could provide a different level of service, we seized the opportunity. Our customers have been seeking this capability and Dynetics is glad to offer it.”