GE continues to add rooftops by promising other governments to manufacture gas turbines in their countries. Massive overhead is added while gas turbine manufacturing plants in South Carolina and France are not even close to manufacturing capacity. World power market is in decline. Alternative Energy is becoming more viable and coal power plants are beginning to show signs of recovery. GE leadership doesn't blink an eye to spend $1 billion for this crap and in the same day develop huge crocodile tears because they can't turn a profit. If you work in Greenville-SC or Belfort-France expect massive layoffs to follow this announcement. Overhead to operate each plant will continue. Financial integrity needs to be investigated because the numbers do not add up.
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Doesn't GE have Test benches at their manufacturing sites? Looks like they should have caught the problems. Why didn't they catch the problems? Must have been another budget cutting initiative from a inexperienced leader.
Maybe GE should focus on making a gas turbine fleet that doesn't have major design flaws and field combustion failures before spending money on more manufacturing plants. These problems happen when you constantly move people from role to role and use layoffs as a way to increase your bonus. Does activist investor Nelson Peltz know about these major gas turbine problems yet? The spirit of integrity says he should already know. I bet GE is afraid to tell Mr. Peltz.
FastWorks has become FailFast
I was impacted by the GE Power layoff. I now work for Siemens and am embarrassed to say I ever worked for GE. The Siemens Plant is modern and professional. Not a dangerous dump like Greenville. Customers see the difference. Siemens is leapfrogging technologies including GE's AMW type activities. Thank you GE for laying me off !
I agree. Leadership is always threatening our jobs saying they will move production to another plant if we can't reduce cost. But they do not look in the mirror at the overhead and dumb business decisions they make.
GE Power used to make money when all gas turbines were manufactured in Greenville, SC. Greenville was able to manufacture more gas turbines than all three (3) current GE Gas Turbine Plants combined. Instead of providing true leadership, GE leaders prefer that GE Plants compete with each other for manufacturing capacity and jobs. They must not calculate the operational overhead cost of having multiple manufacturing plants with low volume. Employees pay the price for incompetent leadership.
The Fall Layoff Rumors are starting to make sense now that the Saudi Arabian plant will make gas turbines formerly manufactured in Greenville, South Carolina.
Immelt was criticized on national news today about negative cash flow. It's not easy to have positive cash flow when you spend like money has an expiration date.
Saudi Plant will have BOP (Balance of Plant) testing capabilities.
The GE Saudi Plant will make both the HA and F class turbine. Not just the H-Series.
Quality is declining in Greenville because of Leaderships decision to replace GE workers with contractors. In the future, these same leaders will blame Greenville for the quality reduction.
Bolze told Greenville that GE was commited to Greenville. After what's going on now, I think commited to Greenville's destruction. Leadership decisions are stacking up as the problem.
The turbine blade design engineering function has already been moved to India for some components. Some of the combustion design engineering function has been moved to China, and part of that team apparently didn't even understand the importance of good coating in protecting their parts from oxidation damage. The HA troubles could be reasonably blamed on this foolish management decision.
Belfort can and do make both 7HA and 9HA, fighting for their production slots to be filled over Greenville all day long -- funny people keep bashing about the new Alstom deal while having lived with the other Alstom deal for more than 20 years now. Saudi's capacity will reduce Greenville's load further before it hurts Belfort's build plan.
Right now everything up to HA.01 is fair game for local manufacturing, parts or assembly, if the government is willing to chip in and choose GE as the technology provider - China, Algeria, and Saudi have been announced so far this year. Soon, some design engineering activities considered core GE specialty in the past will be outsourced to countries willing to pay to build up their local engineering capability - China already signed up!
So Saudi Arabia will start making the H-Class Turbine? Doesn't Belford, France make the 9H and Greenville, SC make the 7H? Are they moving all H Models from both of these plants? What will remain at the already established plants? Perfect example of dumb leadership. Simply dumb....
When I think of GE I am reminded of KMART. A brand that is dieing a slow death. Surviving only because of "Old Money". GE once known as quality is now known as a low quality overpriced conglomerate.
Anybody know the manufacturing capacity of the Saudi Arabia Plant? Upper Leadership is about to learn the cost of low morale.
We should stop referring to them as leaders. They're idiots. GE has gotten so big the idiots can't see the forest for the trees. Destroying a formerly good company before our very eyes.
Goodbye GE Jobs:
Dussur CEO Rasheed al-Shubaili said manufacturing of GE's H-Class turbines in Saudi Arabia would start before the end of the year with the first turbine to be completed in 2018.
The Saudi made gas turbines would be sold in the country and to international customers, he said in an interview in Dubai.
@1pcn so true - they will tell you one thing, core values, blah blah.
They behave differently. So self centered.
Leadership doesn't practice the same transparency and spirit of integrity that they preach.