GE Power Opens $400-Million Advanced Manufacturing Facility in South Carolina

Gas turbine assembly at GE's Greenville, SC manufacturing facility. (Image courtesy of GE Power.)

General Electric (GE) recently celebrated the grand opening of the Advanced Manufacturing Works (AMW) facility for its GE Power division.

The company has invested USD$73 million to date and will invest another $327 million over the next several years. Upon opening, the AMW will create at least 80 engineering and manufacturing jobs.

When asked about the types of engineering disciplines the company would be pursuing for these jobs, AMW general manager Kurt Goodwin said, “It’s a very diverse background; to really do collaboration and innovation in advanced manufacturing we need a cross-section of people with materials focus, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and especially a computer background for making that connection between the physical and the digital.”

According to the company, the AMW will serve as an incubator for the development of advanced manufacturing processes as well as rapid prototyping of new parts for GE’s energy businesses, which encompass power, renewable energy, oil and gas and energy connections.

An employee inspects the compressor section of a 7F.05 turbine. (Image courtesy of GE Power.)

Regarding examples of components that will be produced at the AMW, Goodwin said, “For the gas turbine business, gas turbine buckets or blades, shrouds, compressor blades and combustor parts. For wind turbines, it’s wind turbine blades. For diesel engines and gas reciprocating engines it’s cylinder heads.”

The AMW is an expansion of the GE Power Greenville campus, which began over 40 years ago as a 340,000-square-foot site. The campus has grown significantly since that time and the latest addition of the 125,000-square-foot AMW brings its total size to nearly 1.7 million square feet.

“It’s one of the biggest single facilities in the world for GE and the single biggest gas turbine facility of any kind,” said GE Power president and CEO Steve Bolze.

GE Investing in Domestic Advanced Manufacturing

This announcement comes on the heels of GE’s grand opening for its additive manufacturing center in Pittsburgh. When asked about the difference between the two facilities, Goodwin said, “The one in Pittsburgh is aimed at research that can help the company in general. What we’re focused on here is making the right application of that technology to our products. We take what they develop and add to it as needed to make our type of parts and products.”

“While [the AMW] is housed within our Power business in GE, it has relevance to many of the other divisions across the company,” said Bolze.

For more information, visit the GE Power website.