GE’s FirstBuild™ Celebrates Breakout First Year
July 28 2015 - 8:05AM
Business Wire
New Model of Manufacturing Speeds 8 Products
to Market in 12 Months
- First year generates over 7,500 global
FirstBuild™ online community members, 800+ product ideas, eight new
product introductions, over 40 collaborative projects with
University of Louisville and other maker startups.
- FirstBuild is primed for a great second
year with 10-12 product launches, continued growth in online
participation and community engagement in its Louisville
microfactory.
(NYSE:GE)-- With one year in the rearview mirror,
FirstBuild™ takes lessons learned as GE’s first startup, global
online co-creation community and microfactory to plan for what is
shaping up to be an even more exciting second year.
This Smart News Release features multimedia.
View the full release here:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150728005919/en/
Year One Highlights of GE’s FirstBuild:
- Global online co-creation community
members—over 7,500—from all over the world worked together to
create the next great thing in appliances. Products like the
Paragon™ Induction Cooktop, ChillHub™ Refrigerator and Opal™ Nugget
Ice Maker resulted from this innovative collaboration. Check out
www.firstbuild.com to explore the 24 active projects in the
works.
- Microfactory in Louisville started
producing microkitchens and the Easy-Load Double Ovens, among other
products, in small batch production. Products that start at
FirstBuild can scale up to large-scale production in GE’s factories
across the country. This new model reduces the cost and risk of
product development and enables fast market validation, so products
make it to market faster.
- University of Louisville (UofL)
students working with FirstBuild on 32 capstone projects—giving
them access to state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment and
real–life experiences unavailable in a classroom setting and
facilitated well over 100 personal projects created by local
makers, startups and entrepreneurs—developing a new model
of successful public/private partnerships. The microfactory
site in UofL’s Belknap campus saw over 3,000 people visiting or
working in its lab spaces.
- Marketing strategy created multiple
platforms to interface with consumers—selling products directly to
consumers and sharing active projects through www.firstbuild.com,
at its Louisville maker space, or via crowdfunding platforms like
Indiegogo.
FirstBuild’s second year promises to be more exciting than the
first. Current projects include a built-in home pizza oven and
technology to allow for coffee roasting in a traditional oven.
Part of the Community:
“Our partnership with FirstBuild has exceeded our expectations.
UofL students are learning in a high-tech, innovative environment
in which they are capable of designing and producing concepts and
products that will flourish in the 21st Century marketplace,” said
Dr. Ramsey, President of UofL.
The opening of FirstBuild has also boosted Louisville’s
reputation as a hot spot for entrepreneurial activity. Louisville
Mayor Greg Fischer said, “The breakthrough work at FirstBuild is a
great example of the kinds of big things that effective
partnerships between the City of Louisville and industry leaders
like GE can deliver.”
Through design challenges and ideation, FirstBuild pairs
co-creation and micromanufacturing. The partnership leverages
advanced manufacturing processes and an open innovation approach to
engineering; it has forged partnerships with innovators, including
MakerBot and TechShop to change the way companies design, make and
sell products, delivering benefits for consumers and enterprise
alike.
How it started:
Although unprecedented in major manufacturing, the model for
FirstBuild was based on Local Motors, the open source hardware
innovator that upended traditional product development and
production.
“Credit also goes to our mentor Local Motors,” said Natarajan
Venkatakrishnan who leads FirstBuild. “Using the Local Motors’
model, we created an opportunity and forum to share ideas and
iterate product development. We have been able to green light ideas
by validating them in the market place and more than halve the time
it takes to get products from mind to market—doing so in months
rather than years.”
"At Local Motors we are proud to have translated our proven open
source model of rapid product development and commercialization to
FirstBuild," said John B. Rogers, Jr., CEO and co-founder of Local
Motors. "The FirstBuild team is amazing, and together we are
changing the way home products are developed by rapidly advancing
the design and manufacturing process in a way that's never been
done before. I could not be happier to be part of it."
About FirstBuild
GE’s FirstBuild is a global co-creation community that harnesses
the brainpower of the maker movement to change the way major home
appliances are conceived, designed and manufactured. A physical
state-of-the-art microfactory on the University of Louisville
campus, and international online forum, FirstBuild speeds products
from mind to market by enabling customization through small batch
production, without the costs and risks of traditional mass
manufacturing. For more information and to get involved,
visit FirstBuild.com.
About GE Appliances
GE Appliances is at the forefront of building innovative,
energy-efficient appliances that improve people’s lives. GE
Appliances’ products include refrigerators, freezers, cooking
products, dishwashers, washers, dryers, air conditioners, water
filtration systems and water heaters. General Electric works on
things that matter to build a world that works better. For more
information on GE Appliances, visit www.ge.com/appliances.
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version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150728005919/en/
FirstBuild MediaKim Freeman, 502-452-7819kim@firstbuild.com
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