Humans have been sending objects and each other to space for close to 50 years. GE technology has been near the launch pad since the beginning. On March 17, 1958, for example, a GE-powered Vanguard rocket blasted the Vanguard 1 satellite to space. That probe is today the oldest man-made object in space. (The first two Russian Sputniks and the U.S. Explorer 1 that preceded it fell back to earth decades ago.)
In 1960, GE's Discovery XIII satellite became the first man-made object to be recovered from orbit around Earth. After completing 17 trips around the earth in 27 hours, Discovery brought back the first color photos of our planet from an altitude of 700 miles.
This list could go on. GE engineers keep working with NASA to crack tough problems and solve scientific riddles. When the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on descent from orbit in 2003, GE scientists together with NASA and industry partners developed repair kits for astronauts to fix up damage to the shuttle fleet in space and prevent similar disasters in the future. The team designed the kits from special ceramic composite materials whose offspring now serve inside next-generation jet engines like the LEAP and GE9X.
Another riddle involved eyesight. NASA documented at least seven cases where astronauts with healthy eyes returned to Earth with altered vision. Engineers at GE Global Research developed a special ultrasound probe to track changes in their vision during exposure to microgravity. It has been since used on the International Space Station. Scientists hope that back on earth the research could advance the understanding of the underlying causes of traumatic brain injuries and lead to better monitoring of changes in brain pressure in people who sustain blows to the head.
Today, anybody can experience multiples of early GE space power. The GE rocket engine that took Vanguard 1 to space produced 30,000 pounds of thrust. GE’s largest jet engine, the GE90-115, can generate up to 127,900 pounds. They power many Boeing 777 aircraft.
Take a look at our slideshow.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/InSpace4.jpg"]
In 1969, GE built an underwater habitat off the Caribbean island of St. John. Called Tektite I, part of the habitat’s purpose was for NASA to conduct research on how crews would behave during long-duration space missions. It was built from two steel cylinders that were connected via a passageway. The program lasted two months, and aquanauts spent a total of 432 man-hours in the habitat. Image courtesy OAR/National Undersea Research Program.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/InSpace5.jpg"]
To help engineers figure out how to get space vehicles off the Earth and to far away destinations, GE created this circular slide rule called the Space Propulsion Calculator. On the front are solutions for rocketry beam power, thrust, propellant consumption, specific impulse and exhaust velocity. The calculator also let users compute numbers for chemical, nuclear and photon rockets as well as magnetohydrodynamic and ion drives. The back offers calculations for planetary data like revolutions, gravity and astronomical constants. Production date unknown. Image courtesy International Slide Rule Museum.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Lunar-Landing.gif"]
GE engineers ground-tested Apollo 11’s command and lunar modules. NASA attached a GE jet engine to the Lunar Lander Test Vehicle to simulate the moon’s weaker gravity.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree1.jpg"]
The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft launched in 1977. They are currently exploring the edge of the solar system. GE engineers designed the Voyagers’ command computers directing the flight path and providing communication links with NASA Mission Control. They also developed the probes’ electricity generator for the spacecraft’s instruments, computers, radio and other systems. The Voyagers have sent back detailed images of the solar system planets and their moons, confirmed the existence of Neptune’s rings, and gathered data about stars near the edges of the Milky Way.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree1A.jpg"]
The Voyagers’s next mission is to explore the boundary of the Solar System. NASA now estimates that the probes will survive until 2025. The Voyagers also carry cargo designed to communicate a message from Earth to extraterrestrials. Each probe holds a special phonograph record, a 12-inch encoded gold-plated copper disc containing music, sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, from Bach and Chuck Berry to birds, heartbeat, and laughter.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree2.jpg"]
GE engineers led the design, integration and testing of the 14-foot, 4,400-pound Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 satellites that photographed Earth from 1982 until 2012. GE also managed the flight and ground missions of the spacecraft, and GE’s digital image analysis lab in Lanham, Maryland, processed their images to reveal details as small as 30 meters long, such as highways and bridges. In March 2012, Landsat 5 entered the Guinness World Records book as the “longest-operating Earth observation satellite.” The spacecraft was designed for a three-year mission but served for nearly 30 years.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dubai.gif"]
GE engineers led the design, integration and testing of the 14-foot, 4,400-pound Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 satellites that photographed Earth from 1982 until 2012. This time-lapse compiled from Landsat photographs shows the rate of Dubai’s growth at one frame per year from 2000 through 2011. Source: NASA
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree3.jpg"]
The Hexagon and Gambit were among the largest spy satellites ever built. They were the size of a tractor trailer, 10 feet in diameter and 55 feet in length. GE engineers designed and built recovery vehicles, command systems, mission planning software and other systems critical for the mission.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree4.jpg"]
The top secret spy satellite programs ran from 1963 to 1986. In 1984, President Reagan commended the engineers and others who worked on the satellites. But the presidential honor remained secret until 2011, when the program was declassified.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree5.jpg"]
The technology to beam images from space wirelessly was then still in its infancy. This formerly top secret photograph shows workers "de-spooling" film from recovery vehicles.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BreakingFree7.jpg"]
GE engineers, in collaboration with NASA and industry partners, helped design and fabricate unique patches to plug up in space debris damage on the shuttle’s wings and belly that caused the Columbia disater. The patches were made from a special ceramic composite material that could survive wild temperature swings, from minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit in orbit to a 3,000-degree inferno caused by the drag of Earth’s atmosphere during the shuttle’s 17,000 miles-per-hour descent.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/InSpace1.jpg"]
GE built the X-405 liquid-fueled rocket engine for the first stage of the Vanguard rocket, which successfully placed America’s second satellite into orbit in 1958. Image courtesy National Air and Space Museum.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/InSpace2.jpg"]
President Dwight Eisenhower stands with the recovered Discovery satellite. In 1960, GE's Discovery XIII became the first man-made object to be recovered from orbit around Earth. Completing 17 trips around the earth in 27 hours, Discovery also brought back the first color photos of our home planet from altitudes of up to 700 miles.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/InSpace3.jpg"]
Buzz Aldrin poses on the moon. His visor reflects Armstrong and the lunar lander. More than 6,000 GE employees worked to help put Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin on the moon in 1969. In fact, Armstrong’s first step on the moon occurred with boots made from GE silicone rubber. The company also supplied the Apollo program’s overall quality control, systems engineering support, launch vehicle test facilities and the ship-to-satellite system that provided the first live color TV pictures of splash-down and recovery. Courtesy NASA.
[/image]
[/slides]
Showing posts with label Photos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photos. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Monday, June 18, 2012
Ken and the Art of Jet Engine Maintenance: How Father-Daughter Team Learned to Fix Jet Engines on the Kansas Prairie
Kenny Glasgow has never set foot in an executive suite but that didn’t stop him from flying to work. In the 1960s, Glasgow was fixing jet engines at GE’s Strother Field plant in Kansas, and saved up wages for a small Cessna 150 two-seater plane. “One fall the Arkansas River flooded and the road to Strother was closed for a several days,” Glasgow says. “I had about a quarter of a mile of alfalfa just east of the house. You could land down there when it wasn’t too tall. So I just flew to work.”
Glasgow gets things done. He spent almost four decades at GE, getting in on the ground level as a “heavy helper” in the maintenance department, and soaring to a leadership job on GE’s classified work for the B-2 stealth bomber. “The company raised my family,” he says. “It turned out to be heaven sent.”
Glasgow, now 75, grew up on a farm six miles from Strother that his grandfather settled in 1871. “Wrench turning was not all that unfamiliar,” he says. “On the farm, you kept most of your things running yourself.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/KennyGlasgow1.jpg"]
Radioman: Kenny Glasgow sporting a flight jacket outside his barracks in Argentia, Newfoundland. Glasgow served in the U.S. Navy as a radioman on surveillance planes flying over the north Atlantic from 1954 until 1958. He joined GE in 1961.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/KennyGlasgow2.jpg"]
Kenny Glasgow with his daughter Kathryn. “My father swears that aviation is in our blood,” Kathryn says.
[/image]
[/slides]
He joined the NAVY from high school, and after active duty as a radioman on the Warning Star surveillance planes he found work on an oil rig. When the rig shut down, “my brother and I were looking in the paper for something to do to get groceries,” Glasgow says.
GE’s Strother engine repair and assembly plant was a decade old when the Glasgow brothers started, earning $1.78 ½ per hour. “That was a pretty good wage at the time,” Glasgow says.
He started by working nightshifts, drilling holes in concrete hangar floors to install machinery. But he soon advanced and started servicing and testing GE’s J73 and J85 jet engines. He learned on the job, from technical manuals and from other workers. “The foremen knew because most of them had done the job before,” Glasgow says. “They came through the ranks.”
He also learned from engineers at the plant. “It took me quite a while to be able to listen at the level they were talking, but once I caught on, they were like a walking book of knowledge,” Glasgow says.
In the late 1960s, Glasgow bought the Cessna and took his family on flying expeditions. One of his daughters, Kathryn, was smitten. “I remember spending weekends polishing that thing,” she says. “It was our family time. My father swears that aviation is in our blood.”
Kathryn got introduced to GE and Strother as a girl. “We’d bring dad dinner and get to spend a little more time with him,” she says. When it was her turn to graduate from high school, she went straight to the plant. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I always knew that I wanted to work here,” Kathryn says.
Like her father, Kathryn started at the bottom and now leads a team that repairs engines for Apache and Black Hawk helicopters. “There weren’t many women here when I was hired,” she says. “My dad was a protector, he was not afraid to say something to somebody.”
Glasgow taught her how to fix airplanes, shape tools, and find new solutions to problems. “He expected a lot, he wanted you to know a lot,” she says. When Kathryn decided to apply for an inspector job, she says, her father challenged her to read a measuring tool, the C – micrometer. “She could not do it, but by golly she learned quickly,” Glasgow laughs.
Glasgow retired from Strother in 1998, when the B-2 work was over. With more than 800 employees, the plant is one of the largest employers on Cowley County, Kansas. “This is a small community,” Glasgow says. “It’s like a family operation.”
Glasgow gets things done. He spent almost four decades at GE, getting in on the ground level as a “heavy helper” in the maintenance department, and soaring to a leadership job on GE’s classified work for the B-2 stealth bomber. “The company raised my family,” he says. “It turned out to be heaven sent.”
Glasgow, now 75, grew up on a farm six miles from Strother that his grandfather settled in 1871. “Wrench turning was not all that unfamiliar,” he says. “On the farm, you kept most of your things running yourself.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/KennyGlasgow1.jpg"]
Radioman: Kenny Glasgow sporting a flight jacket outside his barracks in Argentia, Newfoundland. Glasgow served in the U.S. Navy as a radioman on surveillance planes flying over the north Atlantic from 1954 until 1958. He joined GE in 1961.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/KennyGlasgow2.jpg"]
Kenny Glasgow with his daughter Kathryn. “My father swears that aviation is in our blood,” Kathryn says.
[/image]
[/slides]
He joined the NAVY from high school, and after active duty as a radioman on the Warning Star surveillance planes he found work on an oil rig. When the rig shut down, “my brother and I were looking in the paper for something to do to get groceries,” Glasgow says.
GE’s Strother engine repair and assembly plant was a decade old when the Glasgow brothers started, earning $1.78 ½ per hour. “That was a pretty good wage at the time,” Glasgow says.
He started by working nightshifts, drilling holes in concrete hangar floors to install machinery. But he soon advanced and started servicing and testing GE’s J73 and J85 jet engines. He learned on the job, from technical manuals and from other workers. “The foremen knew because most of them had done the job before,” Glasgow says. “They came through the ranks.”
He also learned from engineers at the plant. “It took me quite a while to be able to listen at the level they were talking, but once I caught on, they were like a walking book of knowledge,” Glasgow says.
In the late 1960s, Glasgow bought the Cessna and took his family on flying expeditions. One of his daughters, Kathryn, was smitten. “I remember spending weekends polishing that thing,” she says. “It was our family time. My father swears that aviation is in our blood.”
Kathryn got introduced to GE and Strother as a girl. “We’d bring dad dinner and get to spend a little more time with him,” she says. When it was her turn to graduate from high school, she went straight to the plant. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I always knew that I wanted to work here,” Kathryn says.
Like her father, Kathryn started at the bottom and now leads a team that repairs engines for Apache and Black Hawk helicopters. “There weren’t many women here when I was hired,” she says. “My dad was a protector, he was not afraid to say something to somebody.”
Glasgow taught her how to fix airplanes, shape tools, and find new solutions to problems. “He expected a lot, he wanted you to know a lot,” she says. When Kathryn decided to apply for an inspector job, she says, her father challenged her to read a measuring tool, the C – micrometer. “She could not do it, but by golly she learned quickly,” Glasgow laughs.
Glasgow retired from Strother in 1998, when the B-2 work was over. With more than 800 employees, the plant is one of the largest employers on Cowley County, Kansas. “This is a small community,” Glasgow says. “It’s like a family operation.”
Monday, May 14, 2012
Mother of Invention: Sixty Years Ago, Pat Leary Helped Build GE’s First Supersonic Jet Engine
The week before Mother’s Day, Mark Leary called his mom, Patricia. Mark, who works on GE’s new GEnx engines, has been an engineer at GE Aviation for almost 30 years. Six decades ago, Patricia, who is 83 and the mother of six, helped develop GE’s first jet engines. She still keeps tabs on them. “I look at the pictures of the engines today and they don’t look like anything the engines then,” Patricia said. “I’m sure some of [your] engines are still flying across the country,” said her son.
Patricia joined GE as an engineering assistant in 1949. At the time, there were just 4,000 female engineers in the entire country, and no more than a handful at GE’s aviation unit, then based outside of Boston in Lynn, Massachusetts. “They were looking for people to hire for the Lynn plant," Patricia said. She had a fresh degree in mathematics from Emmanuel College and started in a “calculating pool,” crunching engine test data with a slide rule and a couple of “really fancy” calculators. “I liked the idea that math was being used to produce something,” Patricia said.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Leary.jpg"]
Art and Patricia Leary: Patricia helped develop a key part for GE's first supersonic engine, the J79, in the early 1950s. GE estimates that more than 1,300 J79 engines are still in service, and many are projected to continue through 2020. Art spent 37 year working for GE.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SlideRuleSisters.jpg"]
Slide Rule Sister: Patricia started out in a "calculating pool," analyzing engine test data with a slide rule. "There were no computers then," she said. "Just a couple of really fancy calculators."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/NeumannBurgess.jpg"]
Patricia's bosses Gerhard Neumann and Neil Burgess led the J79 development.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/J79Engine4.jpg"]
Patricia's son Mark Leary stands in front of a J79 engine at GE's learning center in Evendale.
[/image]
[/slides]
Her boss in Lynn was Gerhard Neumann, a jet propulsion legend and innovator. She borrowed books and took GE classes in aerodynamics and gas turbine theory. But she also kept math close and enrolled for an advanced degree at Boston University. “This was well before the string theory,” she laughed. “Complex variables and the Kutta-Joukowski theorem were about as high as we ever got.” The theorem just happens to be the corner stone of aerodynamics.
The new skills came handy quickly. Neumann just started working on GE’s first supersonic jet engine, the J79. The key part of the engine that permitted speeds as high as Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, was a compressor that modulated the amount of air coming inside the engine. “It’s ridiculous that I should remember this, but I was assigned to write a report on the annular shroud, a second ring placed around the middle of the compressor blades to eliminate turbulence,” Patricia said. “We now call it mid-span shroud,” Mark jumped in.
She also analyzed data from compressor tests. The tests did not always go smoothly. “At one point the research compressor was cantilevered from the back wall of a test cell,” she recalled. “We ran it beyond its strength, it came off the wall and chewed up the floor.”
In 1949, GE started moving the aviation unit to Evendale, Ohio. The plant grew from 1,200 to 12,000 employees in just a couple of years. When Patricia first arrived in the summer of 1952, everything was still in flux. “They ran a bus directly from the downtown hotels to the plant,” she said. “So many people were transferring.”
One of them was her husband, Art, a fellow young Bostonian who worked for GE in logistics. They married, and in 1955 Patricia left jet engines for motherhood. “We were a nuclear family, just my husband, myself and the baby, with no relatives nearby,” Patricia said.
Art spent 37 years with GE, and Mark’s older brother also worked for the company. The J79 went to serve on a number on fighter planes like the F-4 Phantom. GE estimates that more than 1,300 J79 engines are still in service, and many are projected to continue through 2020.
Just before they hung up, Patricia asked Mark how long he’s been at GE. “Since 1983,” Mark answered.
“God bless you,” she said. “Time gets by.”
Patricia joined GE as an engineering assistant in 1949. At the time, there were just 4,000 female engineers in the entire country, and no more than a handful at GE’s aviation unit, then based outside of Boston in Lynn, Massachusetts. “They were looking for people to hire for the Lynn plant," Patricia said. She had a fresh degree in mathematics from Emmanuel College and started in a “calculating pool,” crunching engine test data with a slide rule and a couple of “really fancy” calculators. “I liked the idea that math was being used to produce something,” Patricia said.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Leary.jpg"]
Art and Patricia Leary: Patricia helped develop a key part for GE's first supersonic engine, the J79, in the early 1950s. GE estimates that more than 1,300 J79 engines are still in service, and many are projected to continue through 2020. Art spent 37 year working for GE.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/SlideRuleSisters.jpg"]
Slide Rule Sister: Patricia started out in a "calculating pool," analyzing engine test data with a slide rule. "There were no computers then," she said. "Just a couple of really fancy calculators."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/NeumannBurgess.jpg"]
Patricia's bosses Gerhard Neumann and Neil Burgess led the J79 development.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/J79Engine4.jpg"]
Patricia's son Mark Leary stands in front of a J79 engine at GE's learning center in Evendale.
[/image]
[/slides]
Her boss in Lynn was Gerhard Neumann, a jet propulsion legend and innovator. She borrowed books and took GE classes in aerodynamics and gas turbine theory. But she also kept math close and enrolled for an advanced degree at Boston University. “This was well before the string theory,” she laughed. “Complex variables and the Kutta-Joukowski theorem were about as high as we ever got.” The theorem just happens to be the corner stone of aerodynamics.
The new skills came handy quickly. Neumann just started working on GE’s first supersonic jet engine, the J79. The key part of the engine that permitted speeds as high as Mach 2, twice the speed of sound, was a compressor that modulated the amount of air coming inside the engine. “It’s ridiculous that I should remember this, but I was assigned to write a report on the annular shroud, a second ring placed around the middle of the compressor blades to eliminate turbulence,” Patricia said. “We now call it mid-span shroud,” Mark jumped in.
She also analyzed data from compressor tests. The tests did not always go smoothly. “At one point the research compressor was cantilevered from the back wall of a test cell,” she recalled. “We ran it beyond its strength, it came off the wall and chewed up the floor.”
In 1949, GE started moving the aviation unit to Evendale, Ohio. The plant grew from 1,200 to 12,000 employees in just a couple of years. When Patricia first arrived in the summer of 1952, everything was still in flux. “They ran a bus directly from the downtown hotels to the plant,” she said. “So many people were transferring.”
One of them was her husband, Art, a fellow young Bostonian who worked for GE in logistics. They married, and in 1955 Patricia left jet engines for motherhood. “We were a nuclear family, just my husband, myself and the baby, with no relatives nearby,” Patricia said.
Art spent 37 years with GE, and Mark’s older brother also worked for the company. The J79 went to serve on a number on fighter planes like the F-4 Phantom. GE estimates that more than 1,300 J79 engines are still in service, and many are projected to continue through 2020.
Just before they hung up, Patricia asked Mark how long he’s been at GE. “Since 1983,” Mark answered.
“God bless you,” she said. “Time gets by.”
Thursday, May 3, 2012
The Hard Road to Frankfurt: New Lufthansa Flight Caps Epic GEnx Journey
Airlines are queuing up for GE’s GEnx jet engines for many reasons. They’re thrifty with fuel, quiet, and so efficient that jumping a dozen time zones threatens to become a routine. Just two days ago, Lufthansa flew the first passenger GEnx-powered Boeing 747-8 jumbo from Seattle to Frankfurt. Another GEnx set, slung under the wings of a Japan Airlines Dreamliner, now commutes between Boston and Tokyo.
But the road to Frankfurt wasn’t easy. “There for a while we were biting our nails,” says Tom Brisken, general manager in charge of large aircraft customer strategies at GE Aviation.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GenxGermany-2.jpg"]
Guten Tag, Your Majesty: Four GEnx-2B engines power Lufthansa's new "Queen of the Skies" jumbo. The airline ordered twenty 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jets from Boeing. They will all use GE engines.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GenxGermany-3.jpg"]
Guten Tag, Your Majesty: Four GEnx-2B engines power Lufthansa's new "Queen of the Skies" jumbo. The airline ordered twenty 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jets from Boeing. They will all use GE engines.
[/image]
[/slides]
GE engineers started working on GEnx in 2003. Boeing was building a new generation of advanced passenger planes, the Dreamliner and the 747-8 Intercontinental, and wanted engines to match them. “Boeing was pushing hard on weight, so we really pushed hard on engineering,” Brisken says.
GEnx is the offspring of GE90, the largest and most powerful passenger engine ever built and itself an advanced specimen of flying machinery. But GE engineers went to their computers and calculators and started hacking at the elder engine. They reduced the number of the man-sized composite fan blades from 22 to 18, and took more blades out of the engine’s compressor. Still too heavy, they slashed by a third the amount of airfoils in the low pressure turbine at the back end of the engine. “We just went too far,” Brisken says. “When we ran the engine, we were down significantly from where we wanted to be.” The engineers ended up putting 200 pounds worth of airfoils back inside to get performance on target.
It was a victory but it didn’t win the battle. The engine’s high-tech lean combustion system was causing more trouble. “We were getting pressure spikes in the combustion chamber that were creating stalls in the compressor and breaking components,” Brisken says. “It was a real showstopper for the program.”
With little time to spare, it was back to the design desk. “You’ve got a hurricane going on in that combustor,” Brisken, says. “Any disruption is like turning the hurricane on and off. You can just imagine the pounding on the components inside.” The team redesigned fuel manifolds, splitter valves, and other parts to smooth out the pressure flows. “It was like going from a four-speed transmission to a continuous transmission,” Brisken says. “It totally resolved the issues. We turned the pounding off.”
GE makes two types of the GEnx engine, the larger GEnx-1B, which powers the Dreamliner, and its slightly smaller brother GEnx-2B, for the Intercontinental jumbo. The smaller engine entered freighter service last year and today they power 15 cargo planes. Brisken’s already gotten some feedback. Pilots told him the engines are so quiet that they have to look at their gauges to make sure they are running. They are also more efficient. “One pilot flying to Riyadh had to lower his landing gear and circle the airport to burn off fuel because too much fuel remained on board and put him over the maximum landing weight limit,” Brisken says. In fact, new data pushed Boeing to improve its fuel burn estimate by 1 percent, potentially saving airlines millions of dollars. Says Brisken: “That is like heaven for us, to get a result like that.”
But the road to Frankfurt wasn’t easy. “There for a while we were biting our nails,” says Tom Brisken, general manager in charge of large aircraft customer strategies at GE Aviation.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GenxGermany-2.jpg"]
Guten Tag, Your Majesty: Four GEnx-2B engines power Lufthansa's new "Queen of the Skies" jumbo. The airline ordered twenty 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jets from Boeing. They will all use GE engines.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/GenxGermany-3.jpg"]
Guten Tag, Your Majesty: Four GEnx-2B engines power Lufthansa's new "Queen of the Skies" jumbo. The airline ordered twenty 747-8 Intercontinental passenger jets from Boeing. They will all use GE engines.
[/image]
[/slides]
GE engineers started working on GEnx in 2003. Boeing was building a new generation of advanced passenger planes, the Dreamliner and the 747-8 Intercontinental, and wanted engines to match them. “Boeing was pushing hard on weight, so we really pushed hard on engineering,” Brisken says.
GEnx is the offspring of GE90, the largest and most powerful passenger engine ever built and itself an advanced specimen of flying machinery. But GE engineers went to their computers and calculators and started hacking at the elder engine. They reduced the number of the man-sized composite fan blades from 22 to 18, and took more blades out of the engine’s compressor. Still too heavy, they slashed by a third the amount of airfoils in the low pressure turbine at the back end of the engine. “We just went too far,” Brisken says. “When we ran the engine, we were down significantly from where we wanted to be.” The engineers ended up putting 200 pounds worth of airfoils back inside to get performance on target.
It was a victory but it didn’t win the battle. The engine’s high-tech lean combustion system was causing more trouble. “We were getting pressure spikes in the combustion chamber that were creating stalls in the compressor and breaking components,” Brisken says. “It was a real showstopper for the program.”
With little time to spare, it was back to the design desk. “You’ve got a hurricane going on in that combustor,” Brisken, says. “Any disruption is like turning the hurricane on and off. You can just imagine the pounding on the components inside.” The team redesigned fuel manifolds, splitter valves, and other parts to smooth out the pressure flows. “It was like going from a four-speed transmission to a continuous transmission,” Brisken says. “It totally resolved the issues. We turned the pounding off.”
GE makes two types of the GEnx engine, the larger GEnx-1B, which powers the Dreamliner, and its slightly smaller brother GEnx-2B, for the Intercontinental jumbo. The smaller engine entered freighter service last year and today they power 15 cargo planes. Brisken’s already gotten some feedback. Pilots told him the engines are so quiet that they have to look at their gauges to make sure they are running. They are also more efficient. “One pilot flying to Riyadh had to lower his landing gear and circle the airport to burn off fuel because too much fuel remained on board and put him over the maximum landing weight limit,” Brisken says. In fact, new data pushed Boeing to improve its fuel burn estimate by 1 percent, potentially saving airlines millions of dollars. Says Brisken: “That is like heaven for us, to get a result like that.”
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Crowdsourcing for Humvees
Early last year, the U.S. military’s high-tech research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), tapped an online community of designers and car enthusiasts to whip up from scratch a fully deployable military vehicle. Four months later, Local Motors in Phoenix, which hosted the DARPA challenge, delivered the FLYPmode car, “the first military crowdsourced vehicle,” according to Popular Science. “It blows my mind,” Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers told the magazine. “It was just an idea in somebody’s head. We did it through crowdsourcing, and it’s a car that could be used, and its data is freely available for people to mod it and go forward.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode1.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode3.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode4.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode2.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode5.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[/slides]
That’s the idea behind a new project between GE Global Research, DARPA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Developing new military technology is a pricey exercise. But what if you could slash costs and build your idea by tapping the wisdom of the crowd? GE and MIT said today that they would design a “crowd-driven ecosystem for evolutionary design,” or CEED, for DARPA’s vehicleforge.mil project. What’s that? In DARPA talk that is “an open source development collaboration environment and website for the creation of large, complex, cyber-electro-mechanical systems by numerous unaffiliated designers,” say, like the FLYPmode.
In simple terms, the military research agency wants to tap the power of Internet, which it incidentally help develop in the 1960s, and build a new secure crowdsourcing platform where users could freely share, re-use, and remix their ideas and vet them with the crowd before they move on. It is essentially an evolutionary digital feedback loop spun from sophisticated software, where users pick and tweak the best ideas, and advance them to the next level. Only the strongest survive and get funding. “The development of new collaborative software architecture is changing the manufacturing paradigm to a more dynamic and distributive model,” says Joseph Salvo, manager of the Business Integration Technologies Lab at GE Global Research.
The news comes on the heels a $200 million government push into big data announced last week. “Data, in my view, is a transformative new currency for science, engineering, education, commerce and government,” Farnam Jahanian, head of the National Science Foundation’s computer and information science and engineering directorate, told the New York Times.
The new crowdsourcing platform fits well with GE’s efforts to build the Industrial Internet. Such “Internet of Things” will allow people and systems gather and exchange gigabytes of data, design tools and speed up the development of highly complex industrial systems connecting jet engines, appliances, and medical devices. Last year, GE launched a broad foray into big data and opened a new global software headquarters in the Bay Area, in San Ramon, California. It will employ 400 new software engineers who will work to marry software, big data, and new product development. Could FLYPjet engine be next?
Incidentally, this is not the first time GE has helped design a military vehicle. In the 1960s it built a working walking truck. See the video here.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode1.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode3.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode4.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode2.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FLYPmode5.jpg"]
The FLYPmode is the first crowdsourced military vehicle. Photos courtesy of Local Motors.
[/image]
[/slides]
That’s the idea behind a new project between GE Global Research, DARPA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Developing new military technology is a pricey exercise. But what if you could slash costs and build your idea by tapping the wisdom of the crowd? GE and MIT said today that they would design a “crowd-driven ecosystem for evolutionary design,” or CEED, for DARPA’s vehicleforge.mil project. What’s that? In DARPA talk that is “an open source development collaboration environment and website for the creation of large, complex, cyber-electro-mechanical systems by numerous unaffiliated designers,” say, like the FLYPmode.
In simple terms, the military research agency wants to tap the power of Internet, which it incidentally help develop in the 1960s, and build a new secure crowdsourcing platform where users could freely share, re-use, and remix their ideas and vet them with the crowd before they move on. It is essentially an evolutionary digital feedback loop spun from sophisticated software, where users pick and tweak the best ideas, and advance them to the next level. Only the strongest survive and get funding. “The development of new collaborative software architecture is changing the manufacturing paradigm to a more dynamic and distributive model,” says Joseph Salvo, manager of the Business Integration Technologies Lab at GE Global Research.
The news comes on the heels a $200 million government push into big data announced last week. “Data, in my view, is a transformative new currency for science, engineering, education, commerce and government,” Farnam Jahanian, head of the National Science Foundation’s computer and information science and engineering directorate, told the New York Times.
The new crowdsourcing platform fits well with GE’s efforts to build the Industrial Internet. Such “Internet of Things” will allow people and systems gather and exchange gigabytes of data, design tools and speed up the development of highly complex industrial systems connecting jet engines, appliances, and medical devices. Last year, GE launched a broad foray into big data and opened a new global software headquarters in the Bay Area, in San Ramon, California. It will employ 400 new software engineers who will work to marry software, big data, and new product development. Could FLYPjet engine be next?
Incidentally, this is not the first time GE has helped design a military vehicle. In the 1960s it built a working walking truck. See the video here.
Monday, March 19, 2012
“We Pulled Out All the Stops:” GE to Open New Louisville Plant, Second in the City in Two Months
Scott Latham spent 35 years working at GE’s Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky. “Thirty-four of those years were spent phasing out products," the plant manager says.
But this year is different. In February GE started building GeoSpring hybrid water heaters at a new $38 million plant in Louisville, the first new GE factory in the city since 1957. Tomorrow, it will open another plant making high-tech refrigerators. “GE has invested in us and the city of Louisville,” operations manager Scott Douthett says. “The company is committed to building new innovative products in America.” His colleague, team leader Geoffrey Henderson, agrees. “Reviving American manufacturing isn’t going to be decided by the government,” he says. “It’s going to be decided by companies like GE.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Scot-Latham.jpg"]
Scott Latham, plant manager, Building 5: "We take the most in pride in the fact that we were picked to run this project. We have been handed the ball and we are running with it."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Debbie-Patton.jpg"]
Debbie Patton, team leader: "I realized I had to make changes and become more competitive. Employees have to change and the company has to change in order to continue to grow and bring jobs back. It’s a wonderful opportunity for GE and its employees. Maybe someday my grandkids will be able to work here."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Scott-Shaver.jpg"]
Scott Shaver, mission 1 leader: "In my 28-year career, it’s always been about survival." But Shaver now sees a much more positive future. His son also wants to work at GE. "That seems possible now. Very possible."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-cindy-luckett.jpg"]
Cindy Luckett, team leader: "I’m excited because I get to be part of the change. I’ll be the change."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Berni-Klaus.jpg"]
Berny Klaus, lead design engineer and U.S. Army veteran: "While deployed, I could step back and see what my unit and I were doing for our country. Now I am here and doing something at GE on the same scale. That’s pretty amazing."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Geoffrey-Henderson.jpg"]
Geoffrey K. Henderson, team leader: "I’m learning 13 jobs in my section so when my team members come in, I can train them and if they have problems, I can jump in and help them."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Chet-Innamorati.jpg"]
Chet Innamorati, Lean leader: "In addition to jobs in the factory, this means American supplier jobs for parts and service. We’re going to assemble an awesome product in the U.S."
[/image]
[/slides]
The new plant is part of a $1 billion drive to bring new appliance lines to the U.S. and open 1,300 new jobs at GE plants in Louisville, Bloomington, Indiana, and Decatur, Alabama.
Like the GeoSpring line, the new factory is using Lean manufacturing methods to cut waste and boost quality. “We pulled out all the stops to stay competitive,” says Lean leader Chet Innamorati. “We used people across the park, if they had tooling background, regardless of product line, we pulled them in,” adds design engineer Berny Klaus.
Klaus’ colleague Mike Hillerich, whose father and grandfather also worked for GE, says that “the rebirth here is really exciting. I like the idea of working here another twenty-plus years and retiring.”
Everyone in Louisville seems to be eager to see the plant open. “Our mindset has to be faster, faster, faster,” says Scott Shaver, the leader of the refrigerator project. “Sure it’s scary, there are lots of things to figure out. But it’s so exciting. When we start seeing those refrigerators come chugging down the line, it will be a rush.”
GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Immelt will be on hand when the plant opens on Tuesday. Be sure to follow our coverage. In the meantime watch our time-lapse video chronicling the construction of the new plant.
But this year is different. In February GE started building GeoSpring hybrid water heaters at a new $38 million plant in Louisville, the first new GE factory in the city since 1957. Tomorrow, it will open another plant making high-tech refrigerators. “GE has invested in us and the city of Louisville,” operations manager Scott Douthett says. “The company is committed to building new innovative products in America.” His colleague, team leader Geoffrey Henderson, agrees. “Reviving American manufacturing isn’t going to be decided by the government,” he says. “It’s going to be decided by companies like GE.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Scot-Latham.jpg"]
Scott Latham, plant manager, Building 5: "We take the most in pride in the fact that we were picked to run this project. We have been handed the ball and we are running with it."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Debbie-Patton.jpg"]
Debbie Patton, team leader: "I realized I had to make changes and become more competitive. Employees have to change and the company has to change in order to continue to grow and bring jobs back. It’s a wonderful opportunity for GE and its employees. Maybe someday my grandkids will be able to work here."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Scott-Shaver.jpg"]
Scott Shaver, mission 1 leader: "In my 28-year career, it’s always been about survival." But Shaver now sees a much more positive future. His son also wants to work at GE. "That seems possible now. Very possible."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-cindy-luckett.jpg"]
Cindy Luckett, team leader: "I’m excited because I get to be part of the change. I’ll be the change."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Berni-Klaus.jpg"]
Berny Klaus, lead design engineer and U.S. Army veteran: "While deployed, I could step back and see what my unit and I were doing for our country. Now I am here and doing something at GE on the same scale. That’s pretty amazing."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Geoffrey-Henderson.jpg"]
Geoffrey K. Henderson, team leader: "I’m learning 13 jobs in my section so when my team members come in, I can train them and if they have problems, I can jump in and help them."
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ge-Profiles-Chet-Innamorati.jpg"]
Chet Innamorati, Lean leader: "In addition to jobs in the factory, this means American supplier jobs for parts and service. We’re going to assemble an awesome product in the U.S."
[/image]
[/slides]
The new plant is part of a $1 billion drive to bring new appliance lines to the U.S. and open 1,300 new jobs at GE plants in Louisville, Bloomington, Indiana, and Decatur, Alabama.
Like the GeoSpring line, the new factory is using Lean manufacturing methods to cut waste and boost quality. “We pulled out all the stops to stay competitive,” says Lean leader Chet Innamorati. “We used people across the park, if they had tooling background, regardless of product line, we pulled them in,” adds design engineer Berny Klaus.
Klaus’ colleague Mike Hillerich, whose father and grandfather also worked for GE, says that “the rebirth here is really exciting. I like the idea of working here another twenty-plus years and retiring.”
Everyone in Louisville seems to be eager to see the plant open. “Our mindset has to be faster, faster, faster,” says Scott Shaver, the leader of the refrigerator project. “Sure it’s scary, there are lots of things to figure out. But it’s so exciting. When we start seeing those refrigerators come chugging down the line, it will be a rush.”
GE Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Immelt will be on hand when the plant opens on Tuesday. Be sure to follow our coverage. In the meantime watch our time-lapse video chronicling the construction of the new plant.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Talking Turkey
Eddie Velo was a Minnesota turkey farmer with a big headache. His birds produced a lot of manure, tons of it. Workers used pitchforks to clear the stuff out of Velo’s barns, but few could keep at it for very long. He needed a machine that could do the job. Two local entrepreneurial blacksmiths, brothers Cyril and Louis Keller, could help. They made him a light and agile loader that could get around poles and in and out of corners. It did the trick, and a lot more.
Velo’s loader, built in 1957, became the prototype for a whole new compact equipment industry and launched Bobcat Company, an iconic multi-billion American business whose machines now do chores for customers in many corners of the world. Bobcat has more than 600 dealers in the U.S. and another 400 abroad. The company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Doosan Infracore, employs more than 2,500 workers in the United States and Canada and reigns as North Dakota’s largest manufacturer.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat3.jpg"]
Bobcat founder Cyril Keller on a Bobcat M600 loader outside the Melroe (Bobcat) Gwinner, N.D. factory, circa 1967.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat1.jpg"]
Semitrailers carrying new Bobcat skid-steer loaders across America's highways became a common sight as the company's sales grew through the mid- to late-1960s.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat2.jpg"]
The Gwinner, N.D. Melroe (Bobcat) factory in the mid-1960s. As the Bobcat loader took off, the Melroe Company grew to accommodate production.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat4.jpg"]
One of the early M60 three-wheeled loaders, a predecessor to the Bobcat skid-steer loader, working in a common farm application of the time, circa 1959.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat5.jpg"]
Like all M-Series compact excavators, the Bobcat E32 conventional tail swing model features a quieter cab that reduces sound levels by more than 5%.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat6.jpg"]
The Bobcat E55 is a conventional tail swing compact excavator that delivers proven performance through smooth control of the work group, time-saving attachments and fuel-efficient turbocharged diesel engine.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat7.jpg"]
The Bobcat S770 delivers big productivity and performance for digging, loading, pushing, grading and other tough assignments.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat8.jpg"]
The T870 is Bobcat’s largest compact track loader ever manufactured, with a 12-foot lift height, making it the highest lifting compact track loader on the market.
[/image]
[/slides]
A lot of Bobcat’s growth over the last three decades was financed by GE Capital. “Bobcat has experienced dramatic growth during its partnership with GE,” said Ed Hetherington, President of Doosan Infracore Financial Solutions, the financial division that links Bobcat to GE. “Bobcat’s revenue has increased more than 400 percent, in part because GE has extended Bobcat dealers the necessary credit to maintain and grow their businesses and stay competitive.”
GE Capital has the muscle to deliver. The GE unit is the world’s largest equipment finance and leasing company according to the Monitor Magazine, an industry publication. GE’s Equipment Finance business, which is based in Irving, Texas, funded more than $6 billion in equipment for American companies and hospitals in 2011. That figure is expected to grow to nearly $7 billion this year. “We’re an important source of liquidity to businesses across the U.S. and we’re working more quickly and efficiently to help our customers grow and thrive,” Equipment Finance general manager Diane Cooper said.
Bobcat is one of Cooper’s oldest customers and her division has been with the equipment maker through hard times. “The recession was tough on construction equipment customers,” said Rich Goldsbury, President of Bobcat and Doosan in North America. “We witnessed the worst times in the history of our business and industry,” he said. “But GE’s commitment to our dealers allowed many to remain profitable.”
Velo’s loader, built in 1957, became the prototype for a whole new compact equipment industry and launched Bobcat Company, an iconic multi-billion American business whose machines now do chores for customers in many corners of the world. Bobcat has more than 600 dealers in the U.S. and another 400 abroad. The company, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Doosan Infracore, employs more than 2,500 workers in the United States and Canada and reigns as North Dakota’s largest manufacturer.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat3.jpg"]
Bobcat founder Cyril Keller on a Bobcat M600 loader outside the Melroe (Bobcat) Gwinner, N.D. factory, circa 1967.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat1.jpg"]
Semitrailers carrying new Bobcat skid-steer loaders across America's highways became a common sight as the company's sales grew through the mid- to late-1960s.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat2.jpg"]
The Gwinner, N.D. Melroe (Bobcat) factory in the mid-1960s. As the Bobcat loader took off, the Melroe Company grew to accommodate production.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat4.jpg"]
One of the early M60 three-wheeled loaders, a predecessor to the Bobcat skid-steer loader, working in a common farm application of the time, circa 1959.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat5.jpg"]
Like all M-Series compact excavators, the Bobcat E32 conventional tail swing model features a quieter cab that reduces sound levels by more than 5%.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat6.jpg"]
The Bobcat E55 is a conventional tail swing compact excavator that delivers proven performance through smooth control of the work group, time-saving attachments and fuel-efficient turbocharged diesel engine.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat7.jpg"]
The Bobcat S770 delivers big productivity and performance for digging, loading, pushing, grading and other tough assignments.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bobcat8.jpg"]
The T870 is Bobcat’s largest compact track loader ever manufactured, with a 12-foot lift height, making it the highest lifting compact track loader on the market.
[/image]
[/slides]
A lot of Bobcat’s growth over the last three decades was financed by GE Capital. “Bobcat has experienced dramatic growth during its partnership with GE,” said Ed Hetherington, President of Doosan Infracore Financial Solutions, the financial division that links Bobcat to GE. “Bobcat’s revenue has increased more than 400 percent, in part because GE has extended Bobcat dealers the necessary credit to maintain and grow their businesses and stay competitive.”
GE Capital has the muscle to deliver. The GE unit is the world’s largest equipment finance and leasing company according to the Monitor Magazine, an industry publication. GE’s Equipment Finance business, which is based in Irving, Texas, funded more than $6 billion in equipment for American companies and hospitals in 2011. That figure is expected to grow to nearly $7 billion this year. “We’re an important source of liquidity to businesses across the U.S. and we’re working more quickly and efficiently to help our customers grow and thrive,” Equipment Finance general manager Diane Cooper said.
Bobcat is one of Cooper’s oldest customers and her division has been with the equipment maker through hard times. “The recession was tough on construction equipment customers,” said Rich Goldsbury, President of Bobcat and Doosan in North America. “We witnessed the worst times in the history of our business and industry,” he said. “But GE’s commitment to our dealers allowed many to remain profitable.”
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