FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Franklin Electric Co., Inc. announced 2019 as the company’s 75-year anniversary. A lot has changed at Franklin Electric since E.J. (Ed) Schaefer and T.W. (Wayne) Kehoe founded the company in 1944 in Bluffton, Indiana. Since then, the company has grown from a small motor manufacturing company into a global provider of systems and components for moving water and fuel.