entry level production operator

production worker

production supervisor

millwright

maintenance technician

Nucor Corporation

I was with the company for several years and I regretted staying there that long. All but of the original management has either relocated to other locations or been demoted and replaced. They have of serious turnover issue there also. The average time an employee stays is 6 months to a year or until they find a better job. The pay is too unstable and you have to live a frugal life style. I had the hardest time getting a mortgage due to the fact of the bonus system and low hourly pay rate they give you. A good bonus you may make low $30s an hour but that's a rare. Average bonus will yield you $20ish an hour and no bonus is roughly $10 an hour. It looks good on paper but when your bonus is low your making pennies there. Granted they don't lay employees off but they will put you into bankruptcy. They refuse to have comparable pay with nearby plants so many people have quit because of that. They expect you to budget your money but it's very difficult to budget it when you will never know how much money you will make weekly. One week it can be $300.00 and the next week it can be $1000 a week. You never know. There's no sick days so if you come down with the flu either you come to work sick or stay home and receive no pay. You can't take vacation unless someone is willing to work for you. If no one will work you can't take vacation days that you earned. The management is clueless and have no idea how to be management. They always try to cut costs and make very bad financial decisions. The company has invested over 1.6 billion dollars to start up and they haven't ran successfully for more than a year without going down. They have no return on investments to date at that location. The work is very hard, environment is dusty and dirty. Your basically working in a coal mine that's outside. You're constantly in the weather despite pouring downfall of rain, cold freezing temperatures or hot sweltering heat. Just be prepared to hole watch for a whole 12 hour shift, shovel iron ore, sweep iron or dust or break your back demoing or rebuilding a reactor or process gas heater every 6 months. It's not your typical "plant" job as other chemical or refineries in the local areas are like. So don't expect to go there and work like a real plant operator. Your're just a underpaid, overworked laborer who gets treated unfairly.

I typical day at Nucor. we would start with a morning meeting with the maintenance and production team. We would talk about the previous shift and try and get good overview of plant conditions 
before we would start, This way we would hit the ground running.

Being in maintenance, I would get vital information on the condition of the plant. If we was having maintenance issues We would direct our attention to those. If not we would work on preventative maintenance items, project work or training.

As a day shift team member We would support the safety and skill set training of our maintenance team, through hands on training, power point presentation and through training seminars we would set up for the team.  

We then would over see new project coming into the plan which included meeting with contractor, suppliers. maintenance team and the production team. We set up schedules to get the job done. We always checked at least three contractor to compare price quotes. same with suppliers.

We was in charge of the improvements made to the existing machine. We would  keep track of spare part and add new ones when we upgraded. We also would discontinue  store stocking the old part. 

We also store stock parts the we deemed necessary to have on hand. "Critical parts.:  parts that will put the shop down.

Over the years I have learn that diversity is not a negative it is a positive asset to a company. I have seen many different talent in my time. Putting a team together with a diversity of talent makes you stronger.  "The sum is greater than the whole."

The hardest part of the job was the heat. Steel mills are really hot. I did it for 35 years. Hard work is not new to me.

The most enjoyable part of the job was Nucor gave is the opportunity to make our operations  Safer, better, faster and  more dependable. 

Example:  installing check valves for safety. reengineering hydraulic circuits to gain speed for production. Changing a hydraulic proportional valve ramp cards to make the hydraulics more compatible with the regulation controller for a EAF furnace.

NUCOR Steel Louisiana is a great training ground to seek experience in the industrial atmosphere. This location is different from other locations where NUCOR is the big fish in the pond. In Louisiana there are several major players in the area leaving NUCOR really a training ground for the competition. The Management team is less than subpar. Production is first, SAFETY is an after thought. The GM is out of touch with the day to day operations. The leadership style is REACTIVE instead of PROACTIVE. The employees that they hire have no mechanical experience, and are not properly trained once they are hired, they walk with an experience person for about a week then they are placed in a area and have to figure it out on their own. NSLA has had 3 Safety Directors in four years as well as Environmental Directors, controllers and other administrative people. I was the 3rd one in four years. Extremely high turnover rate due to the competition in the area. For every 8-10 new employees they hire they loose the same, its a revolving door.  NUCOR Steel Louisiana pays on a production bonus. It works in the steel mills but in LA, its different because its a plant. So if the plant is not running you don't get your bonus. Down time could go from a week to a month. Incompetent maintenance team, real lack of knowledge of how the plant works. A CPA is the HR manager who is clueless as to what or how HR works. No accountability at all. If your looking to get experience and move on this is the place for you. Don't drink the juice about the culture. I had the opportunity to visit other locations. Convent is day and night in reference to culture of the other locations. The NUCOR culture is not the same as Jewett, Auburn, Decatur. Get your experience then get out.

Pay is hard to beat.  Retirement is one of the best in the private sector.  Medical, dental, and vision benefits are a little above average.  In most departments, working conditions are hot and dirty in the summer, and cold and dirty in the winter.  Nucor only improves the working environment for the benefit of the product.  Air conditioning is only provided in very small spaces that you often don't have time to visit. They say they are family oriented, but getting off even for an emergency you are usually not paid.  Sick leave doesn't kick in until the third day in a row off, then you're only paid for 2 days.  Family member in the hospital?  Too bad...you can go but you won't get paid unless you use your ONE personal day per year.  Vacation can't be used for that because 30 days notice is required for vacation to be approved.  No lunch break is given for production employees - you have to eat while you work or work yourself into a break.  Can't be 1 second late or it's a write up.  4 of the same infraction in one year - you're fired.  Traffic bad?  Tornado?  Snowing for 3 days? Leave earlier because Nucor doesn't care why you are late.  Supervisors are very inconsistent across departments and shifts, which is obvious evidence of lack of meaningful training.  Promotions to any actual leadship position is slower at Nucor than anywhere else I've worked.  Most production employees work 4 days on, 4 days off, rotating days and nights.  Unless they work at Nucor, your friends don't work the same schedule, so you end up losing touch.  Great place to work for a young, single person with no kids that has a healthy family.

Birmingham, AL Division - Great company to work for, but the Birmingham division is very up and down though.  Management makes very questionable calls at times and just because you go out of your way to help them, doesn't mean they will return the favor.  Require you to work swing shifts and results in extreme difficulty maintaining a normal life.  Great pay with how little manual labor that is involved in most jobs, as well as great benefits.  This division of Nucor is awful at taking the considerations of how managerial decisions effect the lives of their employees.  Furthermore, its really about who you know at this place when it comes to advancement and your overall treatment as an employee.  If the employees' overall best interest, including the affect of decisions made on their personal lives, were truly taken into consideration, and if every employee had the same considerations for job advancement and placement, rather than being based on how good of friends you are with certain people or supervisors, it would be a great place to be... except for the swing shifts that is.  Never the less, that is not the case here.  It is still a fairly good place to work, but there is no question, Nucor Steel Birmingham has more than plenty of room for improvement, even after the new GM was hired at the beginning of 2018.

The production employees stand to earn good money, and the earnings are less tiered than administrative positions.  Clerks earn little, but different clerks earn substantially more than others, with caps depending on the title.  In administrative positions, there is the ability to learn more, but not always the opportunity.  Preference is given to inside candidates when hiring, but more specifically to candidates with the most experience as the biggest driver of the choice.  It seems somewhat difficult to move up into a position.  The culture is highly political, and managers have a large incentive to keep pay down for employees despite their own salary being multiples of those beneath them.  There is an overt focus on profitability over people.  People without a degree seemed more or less stuck at a certain level in administrative positions, as a degree was given much focus in hiring.  The difference between production and administrative cannot be overstated.  Profit based incentives were a nice bonus, the problem is that managers get a bonus multiple times larger than those under them, so they have yet a larger incentive to keep wages down.
Because of bonus structure, normal wages were a bit lower, so for some employees, they are living on little throughout the year waiting for a large bonus at the end.

Employees get pay based on a Production Bonus System - no production = no bonus - Oh and P.B. is more than half of your pay. This system penalizes employees for things out of their control (weather / acts of God, utilities & supplier limitations, market conditions, management decisions)
There is a complicated formula to calculate Overtime - most employees will not be able to explain this to you. 
They operate a high intensity work place because, literally, your pay is dependent on everyone else's performance - whether you had anything directly to do with or not.
Job Work / Life Balance is not a concept that is discussed at Nucor. Managers and Supervisors are expected to be there at anytime, at the drop of a hat, if needed - no exceptions. This expectation is filtered down to all employees.
They operate in mostly far off rural places where economic conditions are depressed and education levels are low. Many employees did not finished high school, are not remotely academically oriented. This makes Nucor very popular in these areas, where your employment options would have otherwise been limited to farm work or the neighborhood Walmart.
There is no sick pay time off - if you miss work - you can lose your PB for the day, the week or be written up and fired for calling in sick. Same thing if you are late. Needless to say, people who work there are never late and they don't miss work unless it is planned vacation, in advance. The system naturally weeds out the people with bad attendance records or are habitually late.

• Develop metrics to measure facility capacity and output, Control and reduce costs, identify equipment and process flow bottlenecks, implement process flow optimization
• Conduct ISO 9001:2008 Audits, suggest corrective actions for maximizing efficiency and building environmental standards
• Extract Data from PLSQL and various database systems to conduct statistical analysis (Process Capability, Histograms, Pareto charts, Ishikawa Diagram, root cause analysis, SPC, Control Charts etc)
• Suggest improvements to processes, procedures based on analysis
• Perform Calibration and MSA studies for TS16949 standards
• Use Ross software systems to enter purchase orders and pull Quality Data
• Use CAD to modify a rolling bed consisting a Eddy Current/Ultrasonic Testing System for continuous flow of product
• Estimate the cost of installing HVAC systems, interact with contractors and take bids
• Utilize Engineering principles to prepare and conduct various mechanical, metallurgical property tests on all grades of steel
• Ensure proper Lab techniques by utilizing Engineering tools as tensile testers, etch tanks, polishers and lab microscopes
• Communicate with team mates for quality control and inventory status
• Emphasize Safety for fellow employees as well as for the environment
• Organize and enter data into Roll ware/SharePoint Systems to expedite material

Really is a great place to work, production bonus is awesome but can be inconsistent depending on how well the product runs in the mill. Health insurance and 401k benefits are great! They have a health clinic and physical therapist on site for you and your family free of charge. HR and management actually care about you and value your feedback, especially when it comes to safety and ways they can improve your work environment to make your job easier. You get a couple weeks vacation right off the bat. Working directly in the rolling mill can be really hard some days, a lot of time on your feet, getting dirty and a lot of physical labor when we are running bad. When we run good you get a good bonus and get to sit back while the mill cranks out product. Swing shifts are not that bad, 4 days on, 4 days off. 4 days off is really nice! Due to having a good amount of vacation they have people taking, you will have plenty of opportunity to pick up overtime. If you are a hard worker, don't mind getting dirty, and have a good attitude, you will advance quickly. It is really easy to make six figures here, even as a basic grade 1 with a little bit of overtime you will make $80k at least. You take care of the company by working hard and cranking out good product, in return you get paid very well with great benefits. 

•	Responsible for the Design, Development and Delivery of all the modules.
•	Design and develop the GUI, Business Logic Layer and Data Access Layer.
•	Developed Stored Procedures and functions in PL\SQL and communicated using WCF services which use ADO .NET for communication with database.
•	Involved in development and usage of user controls as views for different modules.
•	 Worked on business components and business objects.
•	Implemented the business logic in the middle tier using C#.
•	Developed UI using WPF Controls and Telerik RAD UI Controls.
•	Used Command objects for validation and communication with UI.
•	Improved the performance of old applications using App fabric Cache.
•	Analyzed and fixed defects.
•	Involved in developing new batch jobs using VB.
•	Supported Production jobs which run using OpCon scheduler.
•	Visual Source Safe has been used for all the source code maintenance.
•	Involved in creating Proof of Concept application for migrating mainframe applications to .NET with centralized business logic layer using Windows Workflow Foundation.
•	Web pages in the web sites were secured using Site Minder which handles Single sign-on.
•	Communications between different domains of same counties are done in SAML to achieve Single Sign-on.


Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Entry level production operator 21 salaries reported	$19.87 per hour
Production worker 9 salaries reported	$27.05 per hour
Production supervisor 5 salaries reported	$116,246 per year
Millwright 4 salaries reported	$71,750 per year
Maintenance technician 5 salaries reported	$26.55 per hour

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