General Electric Specialty Control Plant is a 115 acres (47 ha) historic factory complex located in Waynesboro, Virginia.

The Waynesboro plant was one of some 120 individual operating departments created as part of a decentralization effort by the General Electric Corporation.

The road north of Hopeman Parkway was renamed Solutions Way while the southern part remained GENICOM Drive at the request of property owners in that area.

In the early 1950s the General Electric Company was a highly centralized operation with six major manufacturing "works", as they were called.

At that time, under Ralph Cordiner's presidency, a major decentralization occurred whereby larger business groups were divided into individual operating departments, with new plants built in many different locations across the country.

The previous Industrial Control Division, located in Schenectady, New York, was subdivided into four such departments, each of the first three with a common product line sufficient for efficient and viable operation as separate entities.

In 1953, GE purchased the old, no longer used, Waynesboro airport, consisting of 75 acres of land located just west of the Norfolk &Western Railroad and north of what was to become Hopeman Parkway—43 of them improved with the plant, parking lots, and finished grounds.

Construction of the new plant began, and by the summer of 1954 had reached a point where production of photoelectric devices was begun with the relocation of supervisory personnel from Schenectady, and the hiring of approximately 10 women from the local area.

Waynesboro and the surrounding area experienced a major building boom in 1955 as over 140 GE families began relocating to work in the new facility.

The local families graciously welcomed the newcomers from the north, and helped to facilitate a smooth transition and assimilation into their new home.

Others moved on through while seeking the end of their rainbow while still others, growing weary of the structured working environment, returned to their agrarian roots.

A partial list included: This diversity had a positive effect as the department was in a better position to weather the ups and downs of the normal business cycles that occurred over the years, requiring fewer layoffs and having a leveling effect on GE's and the local area's economic stability, than that which occurred elsewhere.

A special development team under Kirk Snell, with John Larew, Seymour Depew and others, temporarily took over a small facility (formerly an independent used car agency) in Fishersville to develop the new product, utilizing solid-state technology and printed circuit boards, thus offering a line of printer terminals for the computer and business data field dominated primarily by Teletype.

From the beginning of operations in Waynesboro, the Specialty Control Department had five general managers: Dr. Louis T. Rader, who later became Vice President of the Division.

This resulted in the transfer of the Numerical Equipment Control Department into a new facility north of Charlottesville, Virginia, where it became a part of the Manufacturing Automation Systems Division and now partnered with long-time competitor Fanuc.

By the late 1960s the aircraft business had already been transferred to other GE plants located in Johnson City, New York, and Erie, Pennsylvania.

At that time the darlings of the family became unwanted children and their future was deemed uncertain, as they didn't fit anywhere in the corporate business structure.

Genicom ultimately sold the relay business to a firm, CII Technology, a group of venture capitalists that were combining all such manufacturers into one operation in North Carolina..

Several attempts were made to buy/merge with others already in the field (such as Centronics, Texas Instruments, and Digital EquipmentCorporation's printer division), but these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

On July 17, 2001, a group of venture capitalists, Sun Capital Corporation, bought (for $9.3 million) the printer division of the bankrupt company, and its name became Genicom LLC.

Solutions Way Management, LLC, a subsidiary of Allied Realty, Co., as part of the 2001 Genicom bankruptcy settlement,[1] purchased the former GE property for $750,000 and now operates it as an incubator for fledgling new businesses, providing manufacturing space, and offering support services as required by the newcomers.

General Electric and GENICOM manufactured circuit boards on site using a plating and etching processes that generated waste solvents.