LOUISVILLE—General Electric has just decided to locate its first micro-factory, called FirstBuild™, at the University of Louisville Belknap Campus. The company hopes this new type of facility will help remake US manufacturing by utilizing open-source methods and tapping into the expertise of a wide-ranging community of designers, engineers, and hobbyists. GE hopes this will speed innovation by getting new designs off the drawing board quicker and into consumers' hands.
GE will partner with Local Motors, an open-source hardware innovator, to create this new manufacturing model, which will focus on cooking appliances and open this summer on E. Brandeis Ave. The university will own the building, but it will be a partner, rather than just a landlord. Students will conduct research and get practical training in manufacturing.
“To win in the appliance industry, we have to innovate faster than ever before since we are now competing with companies that apply their rapid electronic products introduction strategy to the appliance industry,” says Kevin Nolan, GE Appliances' vice president of technology. “FirstBuild will also enable us to move select products to larger scale production with more confidence because they will have been vetted by the new platform first.”
“Today, America is searching to define its new manufacturing soul,” says Jay Rogers, chief executive officer of Local Motors. “Many people assume this industrial reinvigoration will come out of the tech hubs of San Francisco, Boston or New York. Trends such as micro-manufacturing powered by co-creation, however, as well as the industrial Internet are showing us that cities like Louisville can again be leaders.”
GE Appliances is also located in Louisville and this initial FirstBuild community will prototype and refine existing GE products as well as new designs.
Nolan adds that it's “important to be close to GE Appliances' design and engineering teams to ensure real-time iteration as small batch production of community designs are transitioned to larger scale production.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
