Manufacturing - GE Appliances, ORNL sign agreement

GE Appliances will be working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to test the waters for innovative products before making multi-million dollar investments. GE's FirstBuild business model takes advantage of advanced technologies and manufacturing techniques to perform rapid prototyping and low-volume production and validation of concepts through low-volume sales. Success at these volumes — 20 to 30 units — will enable GE Appliances to justify the significant investment needed to move graduates of the FirstBuild process to full production. The arrangement, which will take advantage of ORNL's Building Technologies Research and Integration Center and the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, was finalized with the recent signing of a memorandum of understanding.