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manufacturing engineer

I was a design engineer at GE in Lynn MA working under the team called PEC (Product Engineering Center).

I resigned at this job mainly because I wasn’t happy working under the abrasive/abusive management style of GE. I worked for 3 out of about 10 PEC managers that direct teams of about 12-18 engineers each (about 200 engineers in PEC). I did this for 7 years after graduating college and all along I saw the same bullying style justified in urgent deadlines and tight budgets. Finally one day I quit my job after my last manager verbally abused me in front of other engineers. Cursing and throwing objects had become the norm at that point.

GE-Lynn is a plant that besides doing design/analysis work also manufactures hardware. When manufactured hardware doesn’t meet blue print requirements design engineers are asked to evaluate the acceptability of the nonconforming parts. If any of these parts were deemed nonconforming/scrap, the business would lose money and the production schedule for next week would have to compensate for these parts. Needless to say, this situation puts significant stress in engineering to accept parts based on the business and not the safe performance of the parts in the field. Some manufacturing engineers would wait until Friday to tell you about nonconforming parts generated during the week to add pressure to you by forcing you to come up with a decision that same day or come to work over the weekend. I experienced this every week for almost a year of my career. It was disappointing to find out from manufacturing engineers that the reason we were having such a high rate of bad parts was that the business didn’t want to buy new equipment, or because the business didn’t wanted to hire enough people to do the job.

The demographics of the engineering team was about 40% recent graduates (<5 yrs experience) and about 50% engineers waiting for retirement (< 5 yrs to retire). There were no people with intermediate experience. This is because after the economic meltdown in 2009 the benefits were reduced; medical insurance is practically non-existent as you need to pay about 2,000$ (annual out of pocket) before AETNA starts covering your medical expenses, this is if you are single, if you have a family (3 sons + wife) your out of pocket expenses can be as high as 10,000 $ before you have any coverage. There is no coverage for employees having a baby (cost of about 9,000), therefore people looking to start a family often start also looking for another job with better health insurance.
Compensation is not good at GE. Salaries are based on the national average even when the cost of living in New England is much higher than that. There is also a phenomena called salary compression that affect people on their early careers. This is because GE calculates your yearly salary action (salary increase) based on performance. The top performing employees get a salary action (every 14 months and not 12 as most companies do) of about 3.2 %. While the 80% of the rest of the employees get about 2.7 %. I was always considered “Highly Valuable” (80% of population) and even “Top Performer” (10% of population) in a couple of occasions. However this didn’t prevent me from getting behind the average salary for engineers in the market. After 7 years of experience my salary was lower than that of a new employee.

For these reasons I don’t consider GE to be a good company to start/make a career. The people I saw at GE are those that need to pay college debt or those too old to try to move to another company (those waiting for retirement). Employee’s morale is extremely low, salaries offered are typically 25% lower than those of similar jobs in the area, there is no work/life balance, integrity in the manufacturing plants is questionable and the management style is abusive/unprofessional. The reason GE still manages to attract new talent is because its reputation for offering good benefits. This, however, is not true since long ago. The only positive thing I found in GE was the people I meet working in it. Most of the friends I made are now gone (70% of my first group at GE works now for another company), and it makes me sad to find the ones that stay looking anxiously to leave, and feeling cheated by the leadership in the company. Best of luck and hope these words result in you ending in a place that respects you as an engineer.

Your direct manager can make or stagnify you.  Notice by two senior managers put me on special projects, sent me to meetings and seated me on two senior corporate account review boards.  This earned me SME status five times and $ service awards, all without my manager's support. Policies are not uniformly administered: one team member was warned via email that taking 30 days post cancer leave would result in loss of role and placement in a "similar" probably not permanent job; yet a coworker with an issue was kept on payroll/benefits (verified as true) for 365 days and was laid off on the 366 day.  Her role was held so that others could not promote into it.  The remaining 2 teamers did the work all that time.

Workplace culture, without a mentor, can be cutthroat.  Cliques and favoritism abound.  If you can immerse in your role, work with everyone, and become a 'go to' person it'll be great.

The hardest part of the job was also the easiest - 60 hour workweek on salary, but I loved my job so it usually wasn't an issue.

The worst part of the company is OMBUDS, an employee 'reporting' system that some employees use to report against others.  Although employees administering the program thought they were doing good, it was specifically seen over years that certain employees did extreme pattern damage to others via OMBUDS where no proof is required, and to discuss cases with others results in immediate termination.  One witnessed incident blew up into a manufactured crime that never occurred.  The gentleman targeted became ill from the investigation.  Disgusting.  I hope the practice was discontinued.

Good things:  until the last year, equipment, services and all one needed to work were easily or eventually provided.  Support staff such as Security, the Cafe and facility folks were without exception friendly and nice and lightened the environment.  One professional membership was paid for yearly; travel was not high end, but was okay.  

Bottom line:  Since GE, I better appreciate the culture I experienced.  There are employers in CT who are worse in infrastructure, quality of interaction at all levels (rarely heard F(*& at GE) where obscenities now 'out there' are part of normal speaking.  I never experienced direct bullying at work until recently, and there was always some officially or unofficially to talk to.  Not so 'out there' currently.  All in all, I loved my job, my salary was low in the range, but okay, and some of my coworkers and mentors helped me shine. Since GE, I have contracted for several heavy-hitter CT businesses and worked directly for one for a short time and am shocked overall at the lack of professionalism, work ethic and polish.  GE with all its warts was a great gig.  I would love an opportunity to be part of the rebuild.

•	Work as an ERP Project Manager/Six Sigma Black Belt in Product Fulfillment Team (fulfillment team under Supply Chain Group / Product Management Group).
•	Works closely with IT project managers & business users to provide technical and business solutions that meet user needs - Negotiate agreements and commitments by facilitating communication between two teams from initial requirements to final implementation.
•	Responsible for creating standardized reporting and identifying metrics surrounding forecast accuracy and customer service levels improvement
•	Manage new Product/Customer/Origination on-boarding (NPI) and loss of business to ensure accurate demand forecasting, inventory performance, factory promise and fill rate
•	Lead system upgrades, enhancements and break-fix projects to increase functionality and improve forecast accuracy

      Strategy & Planning
•	Meet and work with business team leaders generate work plans.
•	Conducts business process analyses, needs assessments, and preliminary cost/benefits analyses in order to align information technology solutions with business initiatives
•	Provide recommendations to address and resolve business issues for fulfillment group.
•	Design business process and application configuration for Oracle Demantra and S&OP applications based on industry best practices

      Acquisition & Deployment
•	Gather and documenting business requirements, create functional design and technical specifications documents, and perform impact analysis for application changes.
•	Plan and organize tasks, lead process configuration design activities, report progress, and manage and coordinate with consultants or IT team for implementations.

     Operational Management
•	Develop solutions to leverage Oracle applications functionality for the Supply Chain Planning (Sales & Operations Planning) areas. Guides IT technical team in the development reports, conversions, interfaces, and extensions for Oracle Applications. 
•	Lead/Support all solution activities including testing and verification - developing test plans and test cases, preparing test scripts, setting up test data, performing functional testing, and driving change across different functional areas
•	Lead key user sessions for requirement, testing and training. Create and maintain user SOP and system documentation
•	Troubleshooting relating to application functionality, assisting users with problems and resolve issues independently

• Worked in SLA/GDC based onsite-offsite-outsourcing methodology to covert end user requirements into technical specifications; at the same time provided accurate estimates in coordination with offshore team. Developed DB2, CICS, COBOL programs and Remote Stored Procedures (RSP) for GE WEB enabling project, those are called from JSPs using MDI gateway to display the mainframe data on the web through HTML. Provided end-user training and documentation of system
• Designed, developed interfaces between legacy Mainframe and People Soft system to create conversion extracts to load into People Soft HRMS tables and after load process executed Tie Outs reports to verify data uploaded into People Soft is successful. When required executed the special legacy data cleanups process.
• 24x7 mainframe system support (CA7 scheduler) and attempted the immediate solutions for production JOB abends
• Participated in Mainframe cost saving-Bullet Train project. Optimized the all mainframe support activities in area like DB2, CICS, TSO, DASD and performance of each production job/program using STROBE.
• Significantly improved the Enrolment Report process to manage different types of enrolment codes per week and send the separate report in excel format to respective user. New standardized process reduced overall user training and cost.
• Used Six Sigma Quality tool - DMAC to analyze moderately complex processes not only to save the total turnaround time, cost but also to reduce the manual efforts from 60 mins to 10 mins/week which involved manual billing adjustments required in system from report data, including the verification time.
• Defined software standards and documentation for knowledge management bank- Support central/Quick place.
• Selected as Single point of contact (SPOC) by Account Manager to improve 60 employees account level timesheet data tracking process. Primary timesheet data is collected from in house Web Timesheet System (WTS) tool.
• Managed all Service Level Agreement (SLA) activities like presenting monthly Matrix to client, weekly basis monitor and improve all deliveries at project level using GEs Kintana workflow tracking tool.
• Successfully met the required delivery deadlines by providing weekend testing support for Insurance Delivery/Benefit System projects called as contract change & contingency planning (contract negotiation).

The typical General Electric day proceeds with the task orientation of checking emails from customers, technicians and executives. After emails are adhered to, then customers requests are then arranged. Communication between myself and technicians commences, schedules are reviewed with technicians, then they are dispatched according to locale, demographics, skill and customer request. 

I ascertained a level of management skills as well as engineering skills. To exert a skill which has been allocated from years prior, then to see it manifest itself in a positive vector, is indeed an extraordinary venture. I also acquired the ability to decipher which assignments were pertinent and which assignments weren't as pending. Depending on the coding in the machinery, the computer feedback, and the customer's internet reports, I was able to positively assess the situation. 

Executive Management is an extremely omnipresent department within the realms of G.E. The rarity of this department provides an ambivalent effect on the personnel within the organizational level. 

Many of the co-workers possessed phenomenal skills when it pertained to electricity, but rather their social skills were much to be desired. Counseling happened often between myself and co-workers due to the rigor and stress of the job. 

The most difficult part of the job was the constant traveling as well as the blatant racism coming from both executive management as well as the technicians themselves. I've been called several racial slurs directly and indirectly. 

The most enjoyable part of the job would happen to be the traveling. As a director, the company makes it their best interest to reconcile with the notion of their directors being stationary. However, there are certain situations where the director is needed on sight, and on those occasions did i truly enjoy myself. I had the opportunity to visit over 46 states and 10 countries.

This company is horrible, They will lie to you in your interview, tell you everything you want to hear and then tell you that it was never said in your interview. However if it comes to something that benefits them they will hold you to every thing you said in the interview like they recorded it and wrote the 10 commandments out of it. No one in the entire plant communicates with each other, Then wonders how things got so messed up. Are Warehouse inventory accuracy last year was 0.5% accurate. It was so bad that SAP would show thousands of parts in a location and you would walk back to find nothing at all, and no one was even surprised. I was actually told by a manager at one time that even though I was paid by GE that I was only working in a place trying to become GE. Because the plant didnt run be GE's standards. They told every employee during training and interviews that they had 3-5 years of solid work ahead and then hired hundreds of people, hired a bunch of temps and then 8 months later got rid of all the temps and 9 months later announced the closing of the plant. They never has any documentation to prove that we had solid work ahead. They just thought no one could live without the product they were making and planned for a major ramp in production that never happened. They rent the warehouse their in, then rented another warehouse across the river for the big "ramp" in production. Remodeled and expanded the current warehouse all for this big "ramp" in production! Now they have nothing to show for it. Then they told us that we shouldnt worry about the closing of the warehouse because Grove City and Erie's planets were close enough that we could transfer to them. Come to find out that both Grove City and Erie's plants were doing major layoffs and possibly closing too. This is and was by far the worst place I ever worked for in my entire life.

• Created and maintained new training procedures to allow for significant improvements in quality and productivity.
• Spearheaded cost cutting processes such as writing, designing and producing new procedures to lower installation times and costs.
• Conferred with managers, manufacturers' representatives, equipment operators and other workers to demonstrate operational procedures for equipment to users, discussed and established work priorities, resolved equipment related problems and plan installation, preventive maintenance and repair procedures.
• Instrumental in deployment of new equipment and selected, devised, designed and installed mechanical and structural hardware using tools and utilizing knowledge of mechanics and structures to resolve special equipment operation problems.

• Executed daily operations of installations to include the disassembly of malfunctioning equipment, removal of old equipment, and preparation of space for installation of new equipment. Tested and calibrated equipment at regular and required intervals using test and measuring instruments and hand tools to maintain manufacturers' operational specifications. Maintained records of maintenance and repair work and approved updates of equipment as required by manufacturer.
• Readjusted components to manufacturers' specifications, using hand tools, power tools and measuring instruments to include the fabrication of hardware, using machine and power tools, hand tools and related equipment.
• Inspected and tested malfunctioning equipment to determine causes of malfunctions following learned procedures and repair manual instructions and using specialized test and analysis instruments and manufacturers' specifications

The temp agency called me and asked if I was interested in this job. There were 2 shifts but I said I only wanted to do 1st.  They told me the pay rate was 14.70 I said I could work with that. Later I was moved to 3rd shift with no pay increase but that was fine because I was a temp and I learned that all the temps were making about the same amount no matter the shift they were working. Then they hired me and I learned all the lies. 

The pay rate for a new employee is 14.00/hr plus a shift differential which only made about an extra 0.70 difference from what I was getting as a temp. When asked why our take home was less than when we were a temp they explained that it was not we made a base amount as a temp plus a differential. Had I known that I would have rejected this job from the start. But that still did not address the fact that our take home was less after we paid our health insurance but I guess that was something that they were just going to ignore.  They go over how the company has a 401k match but to get the match I have to put money into my 401k. Which means my take home is even less and yeah saving for retirement is important but I won't make it to retirement if I don't eat.  But that is not something they care about. 

They tell us that we will make more after our 1st review which they told us it would be around April. So I decided to stick it out only to find out that was a lie it's almost September now and I'm still waiting on that review with the yearly review for all employees due in Oct I think I'm just SOL. 

Don't get me wrong, this is a good job for some people but when you have to lie to get people in that means something is wrong. They have a very high turnaround with temps due to the low pay. Honestly after working here you get to say you were a CNC operator and go make more money somewhere else. 

If I didn't need the stability on my resume I would have been out of there much sooner.

Towards the end when the first round of recent layoff began, they were starting this new thing where the Project Managers were managing dozens of projects at a time and most of the Project Management functions fell to the Projects Engineers (like me) and they required us to be PEs on many different projects at once: thus, we were not trained in Project Manger functions before this was thrust upon us; since the Project Mangers were no so busy they were unavailable for assistance, so it felt like being set up for failure.  

Then the massive rounds of layoffs began.

It was fun at first; towards the end my main boss (I had 3 or 4 different bosses by that time) gave me a lecture on his "churn" philosophy: He knows his boss trying to pour tasks upon to watch him crack, so he only clocks 40 hours a week but works 60 or 70 to stay one step ahead of his boss's demands -- he called this "the churn".  Basically it was something along lines of scramble to the top of the top of the dog pile, become of king of hill, and do everything you can to knock the competition down or make them look bad (I guess like he felt his boss was trying to do to him).  And lectures on 'perception is reality" -- not about honestly delivering to the customer as promised or giving an accurate quote on services, but whatever the truth it was imperative to control the customer's *perception* of our services by playing these shell games....

Oh anyways, it was awesome at first but then it became this poisonous, Machiavellian stab-you-in-the-back-while-smiling-to-your-face, cut-throat, poisonous culture; I was actually relieved to get laid off.  That's not the kind of human I want to become.

That main boss of mine, he had a wife and two kids.  I wonder what kind of husband and father he became to them.

It is so mis-leading to read all these positive reviews that are highly inaccurate.

I have to believe that they have been written by GE employees that were recruited directly out of college, worked ad GE for a number of years, and never had anything to compare life at GE against.

If you were in this group, officially called GE CLP, Commercial Leadership Program, then you have no real world experience to compare GE against.

In my 6 years in this group, I found half of my time spent defending my job performance against sales people that had zero clue of the automation business, but they seemed to make sense to their immediate managers because they are also clueless.

I'd love to name names, but doubt my review will be posted.

If you choose to work in this group, here is what you will deal with:

1.  Management changes direction as the wind blows.  Usually for the worst as tehy just did in early 2017.

2.  Almost no new products to compete in the industrial automation industry as compared to the other Big three manufacturers.

3.  Management spends more time looking at you to see if they can fire you to cut costs.

4.  Product development is terrible and comes to market to slow to be competitive.

5.  The only real automation they have is migration from older controllers to newer models.  The new models have been released to quickly and do not support functions existing customers expect and need.

6. A sever lack of knowledge in the automation industry.

So if you want to work somewhere where you have thee feeling of being a short timer, then go for it.  My advice would be to get your boss fired,, then maybe you can breathe some life into this group.

You will be constantly frustrated not being able to compete and win against the other Big 3 automation players!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Engineer 20 salaries reported	$100,045 per year
Intern 4 salaries reported	$23.25 per hour
Software engineer 3 salaries reported	$121,000 per year
Assembler 5 salaries reported	$17.84 per hour
Manufacturing engineer 3 salaries reported	$81,500 per year

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