LAFAYETTE, Georgia - As people spend more time at home during the coronavirus pandemic, officials at GE Appliances' Roper plant are seeing a boom in its production of stoves and ovens.
"Everyone's buying appliances, " said Lois Crandell, the plant manager, on Tuesday. "We can't hire enough people."
Crandell said that Roper, which already employs more than 2,000 people at its 1.4 million-square-foot factory, is looking to hire 100 more workers to meet demand for its products.
She expects the factory to make more units in 2020 than last year, despite the disruption created by the virus to the supply chain and the plant even closing for a week early this year.
"It's been hard," added Crandell, who hosted Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan during a 90-minute visit to the sprawling plant.
While at Roper, he saw demonstrations of the technology that the company is putting into its products, including the building of appliances connected to the internet.
"Watching the technology innovation that Roper is weaving into every single product is awesome," the Republican lieutenant governor said. "They're doing it in Georgia."
In August, Duncan officially launched the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, a public-private partnership to position Georgia as the technology capital of the East Coast.
Crandell said GE Appliances is creating "the future of cooking."
"We're providing precision cooking," she said, adding that the plant has a team of 45 design engineers.
Don Gregg, Roper's senior director of engineering, gave orders to an Amazon Echo Dot to remotely operate functions on an oven and tell him the temperature.
Gregg said Roper has developed ovens which include a camera attached to the door, permitting someone to see what's inside on their cell phone or tablet and how it's cooking. He said an oven can be pre-heated or turned off at his residence from his vehicle by use of his phone.
"This in not your grandma's cooking products," Gregg said.
He also showed off a cook-top unit that can boil water in 60 seconds.
"It's incredibly fast," Gregg said.
Crandell said GE Appliances, which is owned by China-based Haier, invested more than $130 million in Georgia in 2019. At the LaFayette plant, the company spent $43 million to launch new products.
At the Roper plant, it processes over 72 miles of steel each day, she said. The factory has 51 stamping presses and the plant produces just about every kind of oven GE produces.
Concerning the coronavirus, Crandell said the plant put into place a wide variety of measures to keep employees safe.
"In March, we shut down for a week. We turned this place upside down," she said, citing the installation of barriers between employees, the use of temperature scanners and other measures.
Still, some workers complained about conditions at the time, which drew a sharp reaction from an aide to former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young.
Tricia Harris, executive aide to the former United States ambassador and Atlanta mayor, in April said she lives in Walker County, heard from relatives who work at the plant and had seen employee worries on social media.
"They should close the plant," she said at the time. "They're putting people at risk. I don't want anyone to die."
However, a GE Appliances spokeswoman said the health and safety of its employees is "our number one priority."
Company spokeswoman MarySusan Abell said the company "took unprecedented steps to modify our factories and work habits to align with (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines and protect employees during the COVID-19 pandemic."
Duncan said during his plant visit that he didn't know the Roper factory was using the technology he was shown in its products.
The aim of the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation is to establish the state as a national leader in technology research, development and implementation while encouraging growth, entrepreneurship and innovation in the state.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.