Club Meeting – June 4th, 2015
GE Celebrates 60th Anniversary of Salem Manufacturing Plant.
On May 16th GE’s Industrial Solutions business celebrated the 60th anniversary of its Salem manufacturing plant. At our meeting today Craig Strong, Plant Manager, spoke of the plants history and current operations. “There’s never been a more exciting time to work in manufacturing. We have a very skilled workforce in Salem, manufacturing highly engineered control products that can be found in equipment on every continent. Many other facilities from the same era are no longer in operation, have been torn down or have been sold. Our Salem plant is unique; we have continued to evolve, embracing changes in technology to stay competitive, improve our processes and remain customer centric. This ability to adapt has helped us keep GE in Salem.”
Since 1955, GE employees have been designing, building and supporting power conversion controls, equipment and software in Salem. Today, the facility is home to more than 700 manufacturing employees, engineers and support staff, including experts from GE’s Oil & Gas and Power & Water businesses.
GE’s facility in Salem designs and produces control systems and integrated circuit boards for gas and steam generators, pitch systems for wind turbine blade controls, starters for gas turbines and down-tower assembly for wind power conversion systems. Together, the circuit boards and control centers produce digital signals that indicate how equipment is running. In addition, design and testing of computer software is done on-site in the facility’s low- and high-voltage labs to ensure GE’s software solutions work harmoniously with the company’s hardware to create simpler, more cohesive control systems for the power generation industry. Products designed and manufactured at the Salem plant are used in applications across the globe. The facility also houses a 24-hour call center to help customers diagnose problems and troubleshoot. Additionally, there is a global training center on-site where customers can learn how to use GE’s equipment – approximately 300 global customers visit the facility every year.
The entire Salem community wishes GE continued success. The GE employees have become an important contributor to the quality of life in our city and region.
