New Caterpillar Plant in Winston Salem, NC.

I drove by the new caterpillar plant today, they are well underway not sure when the planed grand opening is but I hope that ACMOC Chapter 12 can be apart of it.
I did notice that 99% of the machines working there were Caterpillar!

I do not think they will make the November start date but here is what the local paper had to say

09-23-11 Winston Salem Journal
The positive jobs trend is expected to gather momentum over the next few months as Caterpillar Inc. begins ramping up production and its workforce. At full production, the axle-manufacturing plant will have 392 full-time and 118 contract employees.

"We're still in the very early stages of hiring and have less than 30 employees," Caterpillar spokeswoman Bridget Young said Friday.

"We expect the first axle will be complete in early November. There will be some positions available in November, but the majority of the hiring will begin in the first and second quarters of 2012."
[u]
09-24-2011[/u] Winston Salem Journal
Caterpillar Inc. has recalled many of the 400 workers it laid off from a central Indiana engine plant and is starting to hire more people.

The Lafayette Redevelopment Commission on Thursday approved a $50,000 grant to Caterpillar for training new workers that the company plans to hire in the next year. The Journal & Courier reports that when the new hiring is complete, Caterpillar will have rehired 350 of the workers laid off two years ago.

Caterpillar workforce development manager Randy Holmes says the company has been running the Lafayette plant very lean since 2009 and is cautiously optimistic because it has been getting some more stable orders.

The Lafayette plant now has about 1,800 employees.

Caterpillar is nearing the production stage for its $426 million plant in Winston-Salem, which is projected to begin production in the fourth quarter. At full production, the plant will have 392 full-time and 118 contract employees.

The new Cat plant is right beside the former Dell Computer plant, maybe one day they will have production there as well.

In particular, North Carolina’s once thriving furniture industry has been decimated in the last decade. But I saw another example just down the street from Caterpillar: a Dell factory that had employed more than 900 people — and had only been open four years — shut down in late 2010. The Caterpillar factory won’t even replace the lost Dell jobs next door, much less put a dent in all the jobs lost in the last decade.

Factory Field Trip
By JOE NOCERA
Published: September 26, 2011