production operator

leadership development program

shift manager

moldmaker

maintenance mechanic

O-I (Owens-Illinois)


job was not described accurately 
The job was mostly mechanical and not electrical.
The training for the job sets new hires up for failure as established electricians are unavailable to train you or are too distracted with their cell phones to care to train you.
the employer gets upset when you take late breaks even if worked through breaks and need to eat for a medical condition. Even after telling you they recognize you may have to take breaks on the fly.

Management judges you as if you are trained and know what to do on jobs existing coworkers tell you it takes 90 days to train on. They are simply out of touch and looking for people to blame when production does not go well. For instance my trainers told me it was not a good time to train and i should help production by assisting with disruptions on the line and I took the time to make adjustments where I felt comfortable, but in the end they did not find that to be valuable work and chastised me.

the place  is simply dysfunctional and has a long history of not keeping skilled electricians willing to make a radical change in the way they work as compared to other electrical jobs.

* Typical day included continuous close visual inspection of the bottles and putting them through measuring machines and hard gauging them at regular intervals for non-visual defects
*Monitoring the Inspection machines continuously to ensure they are running correctly and not rejecting good bottles nor letting bad bottles pass through to packing 
*Clear jam ups and remove down bottles/ broken glass on the conveyors, machines, and lehr
*Occasionally assist selectors in hand stacking bottles and when the packing equipment is down for mechanical repair
*Ensure that any ware being reworked by selectors is matching the bottles coming off the lehr at that time 
*Communicate with upper management, the bottle forming department and the maintenance mechanics to meet production and qaulity goals
*Record all defective bottles found and mechanical problems in computer system
*Keeping work area clean with sweeping and sometimes cleaning conveyor equipment 

(speaking from an interns perspective) The people outside of my department were nice and seemed to call o-i home since many have been there for over 10 years. O-i has great pay and competitive benefits and good work life balance. 

My experience however wasn't that great. I felt as though the company lacked diversity and didn't put much emphasis on it at all. Like in the whole building I was probably one of 5 minorities. I felt as though in my department they excluded us interns... like the divide between intern and actual employee was very noticeable. The training for our tasks were terrible. It was just quick verbal walk throughs from our boss and she expected to know how to do everything and look at the interns work from last year. How they did things was super confusing and had little to no explanation. One thing I hated about my experience was that the ONLY person I could ask for help was my boss and majority of this time it seemed as though she didn't want to explain it further to me, or how she explained it I didn't understand. When I would ask someone else in the department they didn't know how to do the task she needed us to do. 

Overall the training and job development is what made the experience terrible for me and lack of diversity.

Learned an amazing amount about the glass manufacturing process.
Already had customer experience, knew a lot about bottling production lines, equipment, troubleshooting.
My responsibilities were to go to local area customers, Beam, Wild Turkey, Woodford Reserve / Brown Foreman Louisville bottling locations routinely  and as needed to represent OI, but to ultimately  assist customers in identifying root causes of issues on lines.....supply related, operator error, or machine set up. Most important part was using interpersonal skills and knowledge to build trusting partnerships with operators, mechanics, electricians....all the way up to the plant managers.  I was also responsible for determining disposition of problematic ware, and oversee resorting of said ware if rejected.  Hardest part of job was when OI (we) could not supply quality ware to fulfill customer production requirements.  Most enjoyable was the relationships and teams that were built with the customers at all levels.

Management style is flavor of the month.   In 12 years watched the company go from a traditional management  to engaging people by creating a "wellness culrure", to "people are like rubber bands,  you have to keep them under constant tension." 

Company has no concept of preventive maintenance or process control.   They do run the process faster than the capabilities and blame the operators for production instability.   Equipment is not maintained and the atmosphere is a constant crisis management. 

There is no understanding of safety. Facility averages 12 to 16 recordable per year. The biggest challenge to safety is constantly fighting process instability and being distracted from the surrounding hazards. 

Production,  safety,  and work culture were all better before Al Stroken scrapped the Wellness Culture concept and desired hr to be a "profit center". Corporate resources were better before they laid off 1/3 of the Tech Center days before Christmas a couple years ago.

Whether I was working on mechanical assemblies or wiring machines, it seems like we had new and interesting jobs quite often. I learned quite a lot about hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical assembly. Management at our plant were very capable, but the last machine that was engineered as state of the art from Toledo Engineering was a mess. It was ultimately how I lost my job, because they decided to buy our machines from another vendor.
   As far as co-workers, we had the usual amount of workers who were difficult and gave people a hard time, but most of our guys were a good lot to work with.
   The hardest part of the job for me was being bent over a box for 12 hours when we were doing work in section boxes.
     The most enjoyable part of the job was having a good machine run in, and being ahead of schedule.

The best part of working at OI was my fellow employees, their support and the "we're all in it together" attitude.  The worst part was company leadership, it's questionable focus solely on improving stockholders' dividends.  There is very little advancement at OI.  HR was unable to provide a clear job description and advancement ladder.  They were always working on one, though.  Middle management fails to to listen to its subject matter experts.  Instead it is focused on telling upper management what upper management wants to hear.  Rather than obtain market share by being "the best in class", it has bought it through the acquisition of smaller struggling glass container manufacturers and their debt.  Over the last 15 plus years the company has lost focus on what it does and is a shadow of its former self.

A typical day at OI was busy with lots of project to do and customers to take care of. I learned to understand other people's priorities and to listen and validate other's views. The management were leaders and mentors more than simple boss. I developed much respect for them as real people and professionals. My co-workers were helpful and very resourceful. They knew their job really well. The hardest part of my job it was to keep up with that excellence as an entry level engineer. I learned a lot but I wanted to be more productive and contribute more to the company in my area. The most enjoyable part of my job was to deal with the co-workers and the sense of family and belonging inside the company.

I began as a weekend warrior doing back ups off of an O/S 390 mainframe. I began to rapidly move from 3rd's on the weekend, to 3rd's on the weekdays, to 2nd shift and then on 1st shift. I had trained and supervised 4 of the department resources, updated/revised the department documents, cut checks that were mailed regularly, sent out briefing reports and eventually helped decommission over 100+ boxes and installed server more during the Data Migration and the initial setup of SAP that replaced the old M/F. The only problem was that I was a contractor, I was only supposed to work there six years, which in the end lasted over six! But, I could not seem to wiggle into the company which has been my biggest disappointment as an adult.

Working in the corporate offices as well as the manufacturing facilities I was able to see the entire organization and get a understanding of the majority of stakeholders and viewpoints.While, O-I is a great company that offers a quality product, the recent changes in leadership and structure however have exposed an inability or unwillingness to develop talent and successors. Career paths are more limited due to to recent changes and not more. I enjoy the ability I have everyday to see a finished product being created and to know that I had a hand in ensuring that it is ready for a customer. I enjoy the customer interactions and my role in ensuring that my customers are able to use my product in their processes without problems. The most difficult part of the job is being taken away from it to fill in in other areas.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production operator 13 salaries reported	$26.89 per hour
Leadership development program 2 salaries reported	$65,000 per year
Shift manager 24 salaries reported	$87,521 per year
Moldmaker 18 salaries reported	$40.75 per hour
Maintenance mechanic 3 salaries reported	$41.51 per hour

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