MARION, Ohio — When you arrive at the largest clothes-dryer plant in the world, the first thing you see is not some whiz-bang new product, but a really old one.

Inside the visitor entrance is a dryer made when the plant had just opened in 1955. The appliance was used in someone’s house for 60 years and still works.

Jim Gifford, manager of the Whirlpool Corp. plant, turns the knob and presses one of the buttons. The point, he said, is that Marion has been making appliances a long time, and the equipment is made to last.

About 2,400 workers make a range of dryer models, mostly bearing Amana, Maytag, and Whirlpool brands. The complex covers 2.3 million square feet, and it runs around the clock.

This is more than just an assembly plant. Many of the parts are fabricated in-house. The appliances come together in a series of assembly lines. About 18,000 dryers come off the line every day.

Worker training is extensive and includes a simulated assembly line.

Whirlpool, with headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich. and appliance factories in Clyde and Findlay, describes itself as the world’s largest manufacturer of home appliances. The company has about 97,000 employees and annual sales of $21 billion. It makes big-ticket kitchen and laundry appliances such as refrigerators, ranges, washers, and dryers, among others.

The dryer market has a few quirks. Households are much more likely to have a washing machine than a dryer, because of the ease of using a drying rack or line. In 2014, worldwide washing machine sales, for all manufacturers, were estimated at 98.7 million units compared to 18 million dryer units, according to Freedonia Group, a market research firm.

Also, washing machines tend to have more frequent advancements and changes in features than dryers do, said Emilio Gonzales, senior test program leader for Consumer Reports. That said, dryers are getting some new features, such as Wi-Fi enabled controls and the use of steam to reduce wrinkles.

“You’re getting more models that are electronic in their controls,” he said. “I think the controls are durable enough, but they’re more complicated. That makes repairs more expensive.”

Mr. Gonzales said he is unimpressed with Wi-Fi compatibility because he can’t see a good reason to start the dryer without being present in the laundry room. 

“I don’t see the point because you have to be there to load it,” he said. “We never recommend that you run a dryer unattended anyway.”

Whirlpool is the market leader in part because of its wide variety of products, with prices that go from the low end to the high end. Entry-level dryers can be found for about $300. Top-of-the-line models are about $1,800. Competing companies, such as LG and Samsung tend to focus more on the middle and high end.

The plant is the largest employer in Marion County and provides more than its fair share of bragging material for local boosters.

For instance, in just the past few months, Whirlpool announced plans to install a small wind farm near the plant to generate electricity, helping to offset its power costs. The plant also has been a leader in using robotics systems for certain manufacturing processes, said Gus Comstock, director of Marion CANDO, the local economic-development group.

“If you talk to older people in Marion, they’ll say my grandson works at Whirlpool, or my grandfather worked there. You don’t hear that much any more” about other manufacturers, he said.

Whirlpool has gone through many corporate changes, but the Marion plant has survived. In 2006, the company acquired Maytag and closed several plants, moving the work to plants in Marion and to a washing machine plant in Clyde.

Mr. Gifford, the plant manager in Marion, has been with Whirlpool for 21 years, with stops in Greenville, Ohio, and Tulsa, Okla., before arriving in Marion four years ago.

He says the plant’s strongest attribute is a sense of continuity and history. It has made dryers from the start and so many of the employees there have decades of continuous service. About 1 out of 4 employees have been there at least 20 years, he said. The longest-serving worker has been there 52 years.

So, many people have been there a long time. But if they begin to feel old, they can look at a dryer into the lobby. It’s got almost all of them beat.

First Published September 18, 2016, 4:00 a.m.