For much of the past decade, GE's storied Appliance Park, in Louisville, appeared less like a monument to American manufacturing prowess than a memorial to it. Six factory buildings, each one the size of a large suburban shopping mall, line up neatly in a row. The parking lot in front of them measures a mile long and has its own traffic lights, built to control the chaos that once accompanied shift change. But in 2011, Appliance Park employed not even a tenth of the people it did in its heyday.
Back in 1951, GE didn't build an appliance factory so much as an appliance
citylong dash—a
facility so large it got its own ZIP code (40225). By 1955, Appliance Park employed 16,000 workers and by the 1960s, the workforce was turning out 60,000 appliances a week. Employment peaked at 23,000 in 1973, but by 1984, it had fewer employees than it did in 1955. Former CEO Jack Welch suggested shuttering it. Current CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, tried to sell the entire appliance business in 2008, but as the economy nose-dived, no one would take it. In 2011, the number of employees bottomed out at 1,863.
Yet this year, something exciting has begun to happen! Appliance Park opened an all-new assembly line (its 1st in 55 years) in Building
2long dash—dormant
for 14
yearslong dash—to
make low-energy water heaters, which had previously been made for GE in China. Then GE opened a 2nd new assembly line, this one in Building 5, to make newhigh-tech French-door refrigerators that had been made in Mexico.
Another assembly line is under construction in Building 3, to make a new stainless-steel dishwasher. Building 1 is getting an assembly line to make front-loading washers and matching dryers; GE has never before made those in the United States. And a new plastics-manufacturing facility is now making parts for these appliances.
In the midst of this revival, Immelt made a startling assertion. Writing in Harvard Business
Review,
he declared that outsourcing is "quickly becoming mostly outdated as a business model for GE Appliances." Just 4 years after he tried to sell Appliance Park, believing it to be a relic, he's spending some $800 million to bring the place back to life.
Why did GE's CEOs, Jack Welch and Jeffrey Immelt, consider shuttering Appliance Park?
A. Unions made it difficult to hire employees.
B. Lower-cost foreign competitors were undercutting prices and making Appliance Park less competitive.
C. The Mexican economy was booming.
D. GE could make a profit by selling off the land and buildings.
