Parts for the GE90 jet engine will be manufactured at the new facility, along with development work for new programs.
Senator Stabenow said, “This state-of-the-art GE Aviation facility is creating new advanced manufacturing jobs and supporting our local economy. It’s exciting to see Muskegon County and Norton Shores leading the way in making components for GE’s most powerful jet engine.”
So, you might be asking yourself, what’s a Brilliant Factory? It’s one of the many sub-categories, including Advanced Fabrication, 3D Printing, and Integrated Design, of GE Ventures’ Advanced Manufacturing & Enterprise category; the entire category was the main focus of an Advanced Manufacturing Summit held in late 2016 in Washington D.C.
Bowman said, “The new facility in Muskegon is the first of several GE Brilliant Factories being built throughout the world where machine downtime has been reduced to less than 1%.”
He continued, “GE’s brilliant factories combine the newest technologies, from advanced analytics to 3D printing to collaborative robots that work side-by-side with people. The facility represents an investment in advanced manufacturing — our workforce is constantly adapting and updating their skills for the jobs of tomorrow.”
While Brilliant Factories also employ advanced processes and tools, sensor-enabled manufacturing lines are busy feeding all of the collected data to the company’s cloud-based Predix platform, so GE is able to analyze the sensor data in real time and figure out when a machine could break, and take efforts to fix it before it fails, saving valuable time and money. Thanks to Brilliant Factories, unplanned downtime on the shop floor for issues like machine failure have gone down by 20%, while overall product reliability has gone up. A digital thread runs through the Brilliant Factory, through the value chain and across the company, offering an integrated product view for the entire manufacturing lifecycle.
Nelson said, “We are proud of our association with GE Aviation and the GE Aviation-Muskegon team. We are also quite proud of helping to foster an environment that supports growth in the aerospace field, putting us among the most attractive and competitive aerospace manufacturing states in the nation. GE Aviation’s significant investment and job-creation commitment are encouraging signs of the future economic success of Muskegon and the state of Michigan.”
“Muskegon is leading the way for GE’s transformation in the way we use big data to run our plants more efficiently and effectively,” said Bowman.
To learn more about GE’s Brilliant Factory, take a look at the video:
Discuss in the Brilliant Factory forum at 3DPB.com.