Global demand for GE jet engines, locomotives, gas turbines and other sophisticated machinery has powered GE’s growth and helped create over 10,000 U.S. jobs since 2009. Today, GE announced that industrial orders grew 16% as compared to the same period a year ago. It was also the fourth straight quarter of double-digit growth for the segment.
GE’s American-made goods destined for Asia or South America are manufactured in modern-day industrial cathedrals where 150-ton locomotive parts soar through the air. Another site testing GE’s next-generation GEnx jet engines – their fan blade casings are so large that Shaquille O’Neal could walk through without bowing his head – resembles a futuristic spaceport.
Producers from the GE Show visited three such places, an MRI plant in Florence, South Carolina, a locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a jet testing facility in Peebles, Ohio. Here’s what they came back with:
“People rarely get to see this and it struck us as something beautiful, the size, the scale and the vastness of the plants,” said GE’s Katrina Craigwell who helped produce the show. “The aviation testing site had almost a Star Wars feel. But there was also a real element of craftsmanship, that people were making these things by hand.”
