GE turbine team ditches the 16-pound hammer blues

While some of the brainstorms we feature on GE Reports fall into the rocket science category, others march smartly under the “building a better mousetrap” flag. In the case of GE Energy’s steam turbine manufacturing team in Bangor, Maine, their better idea is not only saving time and money — it’s literally eliminating a real pain in the back. As you can see in the video below, during construction of GE’s turbines, a lock — which wedges into place and functions much like a keystone — has to be pounded in with a 16-pound sledgehammer. Applying such an ancient technique to a modern, high-tech marvel usually took about four hours of heavy swinging. So they invented a gravity-driven “Lock Driver,” which now does the job in about 15 minutes at the press of a button. And as you can see, their “trystorming” effort also produced a few failures that didn’t solve the problem — but proved essential to steering them in the right direction. The elegant solution that ultimately ended up doing the job was entered into an internal competition at GE and then in a national ergonomics one — and took home the top prize: The Ergo Cup!

The team competed against 19 other ones from 12 different companies to win the award, which is given out by the Applied Ergonomics Conference. They also received an award for excellence in Risk Reduction — winning by popular vote from conference attendees and other Ergo Cup competitors.

Not only does the new invention save time, but the risk of potentially damaging the lock or adjacent components is also gone. Now when the Bangor team hears the catch-phrase, “It’s hammertime,” they can cringe just because of a bad 1990s music flashback — not because of the sledgehammer blues!

* See coverage from local TV station WABI
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