GE Careers Blog.

GE’s Nela Park, America’s first industrial park, is 100 years old today. But it keeps churning out innovations like big data software systems to allow cities and towns to remotely manage, monitor and adjust their street lights and alert utilities to power outages.

GE Lighting employed a “big data” system developed by GE Intelligent Platforms to overhaul its plant in East Flat Rock, North Carolina. The system helped workers at the plant cut order-to-shipment time from four to six weeks to as little as three days. Productivity grew by 30 percent and the plant, which manufactures next-generation LED lights, maintains a virtually perfect on-time delivery record. Higher productivity also means more jobs. The plant hired 100 new employees over the last two years and now employs 475 workers, enough to run two shifts five days per week.

GE in the United States employs over 10,000 veterans. That means 1 in every 13 employees at General Electric served in the military. Many of those are at Nela Park in East Cleveland.

The future is looking bright for the GE Lighting Solutions plant, and the CEO of the global company toured the facility to see its energy-saving lighting improvements firsthand on Thursday.

GE Lighting’s Nela Park unearthed a 100-year-old time capsule along with five century-old light bulbs as they kick-off Nela Park’s year long celebration of their 100th anniversary in East Cleveland. After pulling everything out of the time capsule, they tried to light one of the 100-year-old bulbs. Today’s GE Lighting employs some 17,000 employees around the world, including more than 700 at Nela Park, where cutting-edge research continues.