GE Lighting Solutions is the LED subsidiary of GE Lighting, both operating out of the same headquarters in Cleveland. GE Lighting Solutions designs and manufactures LED outdoor and indoor lighting products and has manufacturing plants in Hendersonville, NC, and overseas. The Hendersonville plant serves the global market for outdoor LED lighting systems for roadways, parking lots, and other area lighting applications. Hendersonville also manufactures outdoor and industrial lighting products that use traditional technologies.
There are a number of reasons why GE Lighting Solutions manufactures SSL products in the U.S. One has to do with the company’s preference for manufacturing products where they’re intended to be sold; another is its practice of making baseline models and customizing them to the needs of the installation. This allows GE Lighting Solutions to reduce inventory costs by manufacturing products as orders are received and still deliver them to customers within weeks instead of months. This helps the company control obsolescence – very important with a still-developing technology like solid-state lighting in which products are rapidly superseded by newer versions. Manufacturing overseas for the sizable U.S. market would mean a long supply chain and a large inventory, which could result in a significant amount of unsellable obsolete products over time.
Manufacturing domestically for the U.S. market shrinks transportation times and costs. Steadily rising labor rates in Asia and a small amount of labor required help to negate the main advantage of moving manufacturing offshore. Additionally, intellectual property is easier to protect when manufacturing domestically. When considering whether to do SSL manufacturing in the U.S., it’s important to look at the total cost of manufacturing in the U.S. rather than at the cost of isolated aspects of the manufacturing process.
GE Lighting Solutions is among a number of companies that are working to create and strengthen a solid-state lighting manufacturing base here in the U.S. This will not only help bring significant energy savings through more efficient lighting products but will benefit our economy by adding jobs at multiple levels of the supply chain.
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