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In case you missed it: GE Appliances, a Haier company, will invest more than $3 billion in the next five years to expand its U.S. operations, it announced last month (Fox Business).

What’s going on: “The investment is the second largest in the company’s history and will support the expansion of its air conditioning and water heating portfolio, increase production across all product lines and modernize 11 U.S. manufacturing plants. The first phase will roll out at facilities in Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina.”

• The investment will touch off a “virtuous cycle,” GE Appliances CEO Kevin Nolan told the news outlet, because when more businesses begin to manufacture locally, others generally follow suit.
• The move is in line with the administration’s push to “bring manufacturing back to American soil.”

The details: The Camden, South Carolina, facility will add electric and hybrid water heaters to its manufacturing lineup, “doubling output and employment by 2026.”

• The Tennessee plant will add new air conditioner models, and the Georgia site is putting in new capacity to make gas-induction ranges, cooktops and wall ovens.
• The Decatur, Alabama, plant “will insource top-freezer refrigerator models,” and GE Appliances is investing $490 million into the Kentucky facility to start producing combination washer/dryers and front-loading washing machines.

The benefit: In total, GE Appliances will have invested some $6.5 billion into its U.S. manufacturing and distribution line since 2016.

• It will have created more than 4,000 jobs (with another thousand expected to come from this most recent investment).
• The company contributes more than $30 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product each year, it says, and supports more than 113,000 jobs.

Talent pipeline: “Nolan said the U.S. has to start building up a robust pipeline of workers, which means investing in schools, trade programs and training. He said it’s particularly critical to increase the number of engineers in the country.”

• He added that GE Appliances has apprenticeship partnerships and programs, including involvement with two chapters of the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education. (FAME is the national workforce development initiative founded in 2010 by Toyota and now run by the MI, the NAM’s workforce development and education affiliate).
• Said Nolan: “If you look at other countries out there that are good at manufacturing, their graduation rate of engineers, and especially manufacturing engineers, is much, much higher than the U.S. So you’re not going to bring manufacturing back without engineers.”