Americans are building things again. From Makerbot to GE’s Ecomagination Challenge, an open source competition to find the best ideas in cleantech, opportunities abound today for anyone with the motivation and imagination to get their hands dirty and create things that can solve some of our biggest challenges.
It’s a familiar, scaled model of innovation at GE: Ideas are born and nurtured in the labs of GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, and not just in good times. In fact, when the recession hit, GE doubled down on innovation, increasing technology R&D spending from three to six percent of industrial revenue. From the lab, the best ideas and applications make their way to the dozens of factory floors at GE manufacturing facilities across the U.S. There, GE’s highly-skilled American workforce brings deep experience and open collaboration, through initiatives like teaming, to make the manufacturing process more efficient and bring advanced products to market, often for export.
Our infographic below presents a selection of some of GE’s biggest locations in the U.S. – from Thomas Edison’s original factory in Schenectady, New York, where approximately 1,200 employees work today to build the latest generation of steam turbines and generators, to a GE aviation plant in Durham, North Carolina, where over 300 employees will make 377 fuel-efficient, advanced technology jet engines in 2011. Click on the graphic to learn more and see some of the places where GE is bringing American manufacturing back.
