Machine Build is Great. Company-wide Management Isn't
Pros
Machine Build is a fantastic group to work with. The team is proactive, engineering method driven for problem solving, and work wonders. There is more than plenty of work to go around and opportunities to design unique machines and cells of machines on occasion.
Cons
There is no budget for professional development. Inter-departmental work particularly with the robotics R&D team is broken because the robot R&D employees refuse to work collaboratively. The robot engineer acts as if he is the customer that machine build is working for, and his manager refuses to reign him in to work as part of a team. This highlights the other issue with inter-departmental and Company-wide management. There is a lack of inter-department collaboration, initial design failures, lack of reasonable deadlines for project planning, and poor project budgeting leads to Machine Build picking up all the slack, designing & building machines fast, working around incomplete or unworkable product models and drawings, and doing it all as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The pay isn't very competitive. When people who have been there 30+ years start leaving the company for better opportunities, you know the writing is on the wall.
