Tagged: general electric

The University of Kentucky has reached an agreement with GE Appliances to collaborate on research aimed at producing innovations in the appliances business.

UK President Eli Capilouto  joined GE Appliances executives to announce the collaboration today  at the company’s Appliance Park in Louisville.

The agreement also sets terms for the licensing and sharing of jointly developed innovations.

GE Appliances Vice President Kevin Nolan says the partnership will allow the company to tap into the technical expertise of UK scientists and engineers.

General Electric will temporarily layoff the second shift of its Appliance Park refrigeration production because appliance sales have been slower than expected, the company announced Tuesday.

The layoff in the refrigeration production plant begins Feb. 25 and is expected to last about five weeks, said a statement from GE Appliances spokeswoman Kim Freeman. The five-week timeframe is to "allow excess inventory to be depleted."

The shift has 550 employees, Freeman told WFPL.

1:06 - WFPL and KPR's Kenny Colston tells us what we can expect from the upcoming legislative session in Kentucky, and Joseph Lord looks back at this week's Sugar Bowl victory by the University of Louisville.

1:16 - Andrea Seabrook and DecodeDC explore the interplay of politics and the media, and how press coverage can feed into the negative, partisan bickering in Washington. Case in point: The Fiscal Cliff.

At its height, the General Electric Plant in Louisville employed 23,000 people. That was in 1973.

After that, the plant began to shrink — laying off more and more employees. Like other manufacturing giants, it followed the outsourcing trend, sending jobs overseas, and especially China.

By 2011, GE bottomed-out with less than just 1,900 jobs in the Louisville plant.

But in February of 2012, something began to change. New jobs were created. A new assembly line opened — the first since 1955.

General Electric is hiring more employees than expected to manufacture its new bottom-freezer refrigerator at Louisville's Appliance Park.

GE officials previously announced a total of 600 production line employees would build the new product.  The company currently employs around 400 workers on the first shift, according to spokeswoman Kim Freeman. When the second shift begins later this summer, a total of 772 employees will be working on the appliance, she said.

The addition of 172 production line employees is a testament to the product, said Freeman.