production

vehicle technician

assembler

forklift operator

master technician

Autocar, LLC

If you are management; I will say on a professional level to run, and do not waste your time. I came in w/15 years of Senior Management experience in World Class TS/AIAG Automotive experience. They offered me the job a half hour after my interview, and should have known something was not right with that. They are Engineer to Order - very customized. 

What is wrong? 
Bill of Materials Are not Accurate, which causes backflush errors.

 Major inventory errors with different root causes.
 
Someone messed up their entire inventories. They do not believe in decoupling their supply chain, and are not educated enough to know what that means. But, they have obsolete - service - warranty - and present model inventories all mixed together. They are very tight on space, and you work out of a basement that is about 500,000 square feet too small.   

Warehouse had no lean measures. Mixed parts, different part numbers mixed in same location, identical parts that had 2 to 5 different part numbers assigned to them. 

They have no leverage over their suppliers, and their contracts with suppliers are not in conformance to AIAG standards. Their suppliers could care less if they even ship on time, or 2 weeks late. They do not hold them accountable, nor do they have the leverage to hold their suppliers accountable as they are small business to most of their suppliers.

A customer backlog that was in some cases 60 days past due. 

So, what does a 15 year manager coming in from a TS/AIAG background offer up? APQP meetings, BOM Meetings, redesign of warehouse into lean concepts. Container standardization implementation (they are not green, tons of suppliers shipping in different size cardboard disposables). Real time materials movements, requiring better supplier performance as supplier did not care if they shipped. 

So, if you have an automotive background, and come in to a company who has no strategic vision, all you are doing is watch them chase bad habits over and over, and not going to the root cause. 

I lasted 3 weeks, and they send me packing. "This person offers improvements that we do not participate in." They are light years away from being anything near world class, and they have no desire to participate in TS16949. They could not even pass an ISO 9001 audit. Plus, OSHA would shut them down if they saw the racks that were damaged by fork lifts, and still being used. 


Overall, by far, the worst place I have ever seen.  They cannot ship to their customers on time.  They do not know how to buffer lead times with their present constraints, and they are aware of the constraints, and still refuse to buffer with a longer lead time, or a little more material to take up the slack in poor supplier performance.  They will not source out new suppliers, neither.  I was doing the OMG and slapping myself in the head the entire time.

Their biggest misconception is with-in their own education and management.  They still believe in the 1980's philosophy that Production is "king", and everyone else gets neglected.  They have not invested into the 21st century of AIAG/MMOG standards of balancing ALL OPERATIONS.  They do not understand if one operation is neglected, it will disrupt the supply chain, and impact the customer, which impacts the bottom line profit. Their Materials, Production, Quality, and Engineering Departments were all neglected in some kind of manner.  I would not recommend this company to my own dog.

They say they want to make fans out of their customers and for that to happen they continue; we must be fans as employees.  The company doesn't treat their employees in a manner that would create a fan.  The factory floor assemblers bust their butts but due to their crazy point system good people get fired.  So we always have mostly new people building the trucks and doing quality control.  So we end up with trucks not built right or missing parts.  In my role that made my life worse and busier for no good reason.  I felt like I was constantly covering for the companies' short comings. 

I was a busy bee from the moment I started until 5pm.  There was very little time to think or take a breath.  I left for a more realistic workload and more money.   I always noticed on my salary statement they had my salary working for 87 hours every 2 weeks.  Which meant for the money they were paying me I believe in their heads they expected OT from me.   I'm happy to say I found a company where my salary statement is higher than it was and it only says 80 hours.  

My last thought is they advertise they have a good 401k matching program.  However, you are not vested for 6 years.  So all that money they match gets taken back if you're not there 6 years.  After 2 years your 20% vested.  If I would have known that when I got hired I never would have contributed.  This company might have been good once, but now its a pit for people who can't find something better.   I will never return.

The title says it all. The company's president has no competence in production or material handling, so the talented staff (both hourly and management) are given insufficient materials and unrealistic expectations. This inevitably results in failure, which results in a ridiculous revolving door of managers. I saw five floor managers, two vice presidents, and the HR director all get fired in my short time here. THIS results in people who have no knowledge of production or material handling, let alone the production and material handling processes of this plant, being brought in to run things. And the cycle repeats.

The results speak for themselves. Missing parts, endless overtime and weekends, high stress, low morale, and blame coming straight down from the angry president and hitting everyone on its way down to the bottom.

I can only recommend this company if you like overtime, because rather than hire enough people to get the job done, the president prefers employees to work 50-60 hour weeks. If that's your style, it might be worth it.

Everyday a new issue arises (due to their own mismanagement) that needs resolved on top of your regular job duties. 
Senior management forces decisions on the lower levels without thinking twice. They again revert back the implemented changes a couple days later after realizing it doesn't work (which was already suggested by the lower level team in the first place). 
Senior management/leadership keeps changing every 3 months with new direction/processes. In my 3 years, I have worked under 4 managers and 6 different senior management. 
No process improvements. No timely promotion offered to the employees. Basically no value for the hardworking/deserving employees.
Healthcare premiums are crazy high for the deductible we are paying. No good vacation benefits as well.
Most unprofessional and uncultured place to work at.

This company has a history of laying off salaried employees without clear justification, creating an environment of instability and distrust. Job security and advancement appear to rely more on favoritism than on performance, accomplishments, or reliability. Leadership often acts on one-sided information without proper review or warning, leaving employees vulnerable to unfair treatment. While compensation is competitive and some coworkers are supportive, the lack of transparency, accountability, and fair evaluation makes this a challenging place to build a career.

I was with Autocar for 8 1/2 years.  I ended up in the office as a Product Data and Change Leader.  I was responsible for the maintenance of the Dealer ordering system as well as training and support for the Dealers questions regarding how to navigate the system.  I was also involved in creating and testing new workflow processes in SharePoint system.  I managed engineering changes as well using the Project Management system. I learned so much with this company...from how operations were run to warehousing/receiving until I moved to the office at which point I learned the material planning aspect of the job.  Management at this company at the time of my employment was awesome as well as most of my co-workers. The hardest part of this job was keeping up with the long list of duties I had daily.  The most enjoyable part of this job was the culture and product they built.

Absolutely the worst place I’ve ever worked.. Upper management does not hold outside suppliers accountable, then you are forced to fix the issue on a push time basis on top of the procedure of doing your part of the job, on each truck built and then pull you away to fix the issue in the next station. Putting you behind the next truck being built in your station.. VERY HOSTILE AND STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT!! Not enough money they pay to endure the environment.. It definitely is the.. AUTOCAR WAY!  Very disturbing culture of how these jokers run their business to profit off of welfare money from the government.. “Tax abatements”. If you like to work like they did in the 1920 to 1940s with NO technical upgrades where your body is used and abused on a DAILY basis then this job might be the right one for you! If not move on QUICKLY!

Working for Autocar is very stressful and unorganized. Management create and change rules each day. You get attendance points for clocking out at your scheduled shift time even though no one requested or informed you to stay late. Autocar will have to develop a different strategy and hire individuals who have more experience in Human Resources, Management, and Purchasing (due to the lack of ordering, many purchasing errors, and constantly running out of parts).

Health insurance is the worst in the surrounding counties in manufacturing very expensive for a family $500+ a month. Upper management is clueless no support given. If you are a production supervisor this isn't a place you would want to work as you babysit and that's it you don't get to make decisions they are made for you. Compensation is fair if you negotiate for a few weeks, expect to only receive half of the bonus listed on the offer. Favoritism is shown alot and the warehouse is a total disaster how can you run production when every other day you run out of the same key parts that shut the whole line down.

Uppermanagement in Highland park has zero automotive/trucking experience. They are "customer service" people only. No idea what the industry needs or wants. The parts dept is run by a person that yells all day and does very little coaching. She surrounds herself with snitches to boost her ego. 
The shipping dept is a nightmare and causes other depts to constantly apologize to customers instead of doing their job function. Pay was good, started around $60k for an apologizer position. The company has loads of potential but not with their current leaders. 
Also dont believe their job posting lingo. They dont want outside the box thinkers or anyone with a mind of their own. If you dont follow orders to the T, you are shown the door.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production 1 salary reported	$18.50 per hour
Vehicle technician 2 salaries reported	$21.50 per hour
Assembler 6 salaries reported	$15.38 per hour
Forklift operator 6 salaries reported	$17.00 per hour
Master technician 4 salaries reported	$26.92 per hour

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