senior manufacturing engineer

manufacturing engineer

senior assembler

field service engineer

technician

Olympus Corporation

I was an employee of the Retail Division for Olympus Imaging. Although this division has nothing to do with the Medical division it was good to be part of the concept to work for an organization that is strong in the medical field.

For the retail division I was the Sr. Credit Specialist for the Latin America and Caribbean territory.  Worked hand on hand with the Sales department to review new customer prospects, review their company financials, and commercial references, and country risk assessment. Based on the review, I would assign a credit line and approve the creation of the new customer account in the system.

I was in charge of the Collections, maintaining a Current Receivable portfolio for those accounts, which provided the leverage to hold or release new orders base on customer's current or past due trends.

Constantly negotiating increases of credit lines based on the business needs, or negotiating other forms of secure payments, like advancements, or commercial letters of credit or stand by letters, depending on the customer's strength.

Daily communication with Sales, Customer Service, Logistics, Production, Management, Customer's CFOs or General Managers, and banks, to coordinate the international project from the finance end to ensure company met negotiated lead times to avoid any payment delays.

Sadly the Retail Division suffered the consequences of the recession, a poor decision made by the previous stake holders with money at the Japan headquarters, which became global news in 2010, and this unfortunately started the lay offs with Upper Management in 2010, and recently in March of 2013.  It was then that Olympus Brazil and Olympus Mexico RETAIL divisions were closed, and my functions also from the Center Valley office for those divisions/countries was no longer needed and I was laid off as well, with other 40 co-workers from the Center Valley location.

I enjoyed the customer & sales department contact. Enjoyed coordinating with different areas the aspects of the international projects, and always looking for solutions to very unique situations.

The hardest part was to work under the knowledge that the company (Retail Division) was not doing well, no matter the efforts, but I tried to do my best until the end.

I spent 7 years with people that I used to communicate constantly, we were a good team.

Prepared Dealer and Service contracts for healthcare products by working closely with Legal, Sales, & Technical Services departments, acted as liaison between Marketing & Purchasing departments  Used DocView, a document management system for IBM Series (AS/400) users to scan sales orders & return merchandise authorizations for the Scientific Group's & Medical Systems' Group's medical products. Filed & organized asset management & inventory transactions; handles preparation of check & purchase requisitions; prepared expense reports on paper before they were able to do it online; made travel arrangements for Group Vice President who traveled all over the world, particularly to Japan quite a bit. Hardest part of the job was when I was away on vacation, I did not have a backup person to do my work; therefore, the work would pile up to the point where I needed to ask for overtime, and sometimes it was granted & sometimes it wasn't when it was truly validated. My co-workers were very nice, cooperative, understanding, & helpful; Management was good; my boss was great, very humble, kind, and undertanding of when I needed to take off for family issues. He always believed that family came first. Hardest part of job was when I needed to make travel arrangements on line with Orbitz because my boss had specific requests that were not easy to accommodating. Enjoyed long-term projects that were given to me. The most enjoyable part of my job was interacting with fellow employees & making good friends with whom I still keep in touch after moving back to Long Island.

Did not stay with Company until 8/28/15. Worked until 10/16/13.

Pulling Orders, Receiveing Credit Returns, Refurbishing Demo equipment 
Professional Summary
Motivated Warehouse Clerk with a strong background in performing hands-on warehouse work. Successful in processing outbound shipments efficiently. Expert at inspecting orders and documenting inventory movements. Talented in consistently prioritizing safety by wearing protective gear and following company procedures. Resourceful Warehouse Clerk offering 24 years of experience in safely and accurately moving goods. Focused on avoiding damaged goods by following protocols while lifting up to 50 pounds and operating Fork lift and WaveLift truck. Professional communicator quick to report issues to supervisors to solve problems according to company policies.
 Skills
Data entry
Forklift Certification by employer Warehouse and manufacturing operations
Work History
Materal Handler
Olympus America – San Jose, CA
Familiar with RF systems Warehouse and fulfillment Familiar with WMS
   Received Credit Returns checking for completeness of packaged items Lot Numbers and Serial Numbers of incoming products
Used hand-held scanners RF Device Pulling Orders, pack Orders
Kept warehouse clean and organized to maximize team efficiency and productivity Inspected products for defects and damages and examined ingoing and outgoing shipments to verify accuracy and prevent errors
Completed physical inventory counts each [Timeframe]
Handled claims consistent with client and corporate policies, procedures, best practices and regulations
Used equipment such as Fork lift, order puller, wave, to process excess materials Moving product down and put away

Because it's a Japanese company, the work tends to be broken down into compartments. Over time you can find yourself good at one thing, but in a market that prizes diversity, that isn't good for long-term prospects. The reward though is that the Japanese will keep you throughout your career. So, you can join the company and possibly stay there for your career...if you are in one of the divisions overseas.
In the US, the divisions are somewhat typical - it can come down to who you know and how well connected those people are.
Also, the yearly increases are small on the corporate side.

On the plus side, if you are considering sales, you can do well and be well-compensated, and if you decide to go to the corporate side you can weather most layoffs because Olympus, like many companies prizes sales experience highly, even if you aren't a top performer in the corporate environment.

Overall, Olympus is an average company to work for.
Go in with your eyes open, and insist on a growth plan in writing. Change around jobs every few years to keep yourself marketable and if you are incompetent, learn the political landscape! It could save you.

So...Pros
- If you are in sales or politically connected you can do well and make Olympus a long term career
- It's a diverse company so you have the opportunity to move around if you can get a good manager that will lay out a written growth plan.

Cons
- average to sub-par on compensation compared to other companies
- In the US anyway, politics can override talent

Pros
Not bad salary in line with initial responsibilities.
Cons
Blatant favoritism from upper management if your not part of the original friend of a friend or catching fancy of upper management your out. Forget about your actual experience or knowledge you bring to the table if your not part of the clique your voice really doesn’t matter. Seem more prone to want to push authority and bark orders play favorites if your not on the approved team. Questionable behaviors with leadership let it there.
Advice to Management
Maybe actually be receptive to outside experience and treat people as actual equals. If you want to enforce actual policies maybe actually do it across the board. Not just use as wedge to weed out actual good talent in favor for others in the clique when they are no better and just as in the wrong. Maybe work on employee development and retention and actually listen to your workers. Might actually learn something and create a positive work environment. Break up the cliques and if you want outside perspective treat as equals completely. And maybe not promote and prop up just your friends, family and inappropriate relationship “friends”. And maybe just maybe someone in higher level corporate can identify and correct what has been long ongoing long before I started and sadly still going on. My advice don’t bother better out there trust me or go ahead see for yourself. 

If you have a good work ethic & get stuck in a horrible position, it becomes a dead-end position. A couple times, they hired someone who would have replaced me & I would have moved up (to what turned out to be to another menial, dead-end position.) Those guys couldn't do it & quit after a week or two. If nobody else wants to do it, you're stuck, regardless of your intelligence, knowledge or experience, etc. It drove me crazy but I still worked hard. I was told that after a couple of weeks, I'd move on to picking orders, get forklift certification, etc. 6 months later, I was still doing menial labor. Meanwhile, temps & permantent hires were getting hired to do order picking, labeling, manifesting (which I already knew how to do, I just needed a refresher.)  They had the same job description & title that I did, but got paid more & had an easier day. My day: I pick things up & I put them down - 8 or more hours of working up a constant sweat. The recruiter (not an Olympus employee) told me was going to qualify for the bonus & raise at the end of the fiscal year (prorated, of course) but I didn't. I was incredulous when I found out how much people (including temps) who were hired after me were making as new hires. Nothing personal against anyone. I liked almost everyone I worked with.  

I will come in to work with a set out look of what has to be completed for the day. Get the shop up and running and set up my work bench. Commence with my work repairs estimations and communicating with field reps and customers with products and sales issues.

I have gained a better working knowledge of the biomedical field and what is required to be successful in the field. I also was given the opportunity to learn how to work with varies biomedical equipment.

I got along well with management they where accusable when needed and very easy to talk to. They were flexible with the unforeseen occurrences of day to day life and acknowledge good work from the employees.

I worked very well with my coworkers. Where one of use need help to make a deadline the other would quickly help out. They are very relaxed and easy to talk to and work with not becoming burdens to the other coworkers.

The job is very challenging in itself. Making sure all critical issues with equipment along with the customer’s pacific complaint are assessing correctly is vary challenging. Also administering varies repairs for varies problems can be challenging.

I enjoy the job mostly because of what I do. I like troubleshooting and fixing a problem with electronic and biomedical equipment.

What is the best part of working at the company?
benefits are good but not so good to stay

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
6 days a week 10 hour days for hourly. Management works minimum 7-80 hours a week

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
too stressful. unachievable goals and targets are set. executive management is oblivious to work life balance of the technicians, some techs are working 70 to 75 hours a week. HR never sides with supervisory level management. technicians make false accusations about other techs, supervisors and management constantly. HR and corporate HR always sides with techs and creates a hostile work environment by creating a division between hourly employees and all levels of management. The local HR director is biased towards certain people and has zero empathy, sympathy and feelings towards any person in management. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
13-15 hours a day. salary employees never receive any type of monetary compensation or comp time for hours worked over 40. Local HR will not allow comp time while the San Jose site allows salary employees comp time and offers monetary compensation if they work saturdays.

Senior managers, directors seem to have no interest in doing actual work. They rely on their direct reports to keep things going.  Can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve gone to with directors and above who start off by stating they have not reviewed the material for said meeting/are unprepared. VP’s are great although somewhat clueless to how things really run on a day to day basis. Very little loyalty to current employees. They would prefer to hire externally for less money then promote a current, hard working employee (with perfect review scores!) for a fair salary. They literally have a rule that if you get a new position within the company - your salary can not/should not increase over a certain percentage (despite how much an external candidate could make for the exact same position). Not surprisingly, anyone who complains to HR about their management is gone within a year - not fired but deemed to have a “negative attitude” and eventually decides to leave (this has happened to 4 people in my department within the last 2 years). Incredibly disheartening after awhile.  Olympus as a whole has some great initiatives and a lot of wonderful, caring employees. But you really do have to have a tough skin and realize your hard work will most likely go unnoticed.

Managed day-to-day operations, delegated assignments, directed activity of staff responsible for booking, reviewing, renewing, invoicing, and maintaining all contracts in leasing system.
	Developed processes and created standard operating procedures which implementing operational efficiency for the leasing department outlined below. 
	Created and implemented access database to document and analyze changes to contracts, reasons changes were made and took action to make changes accordingly. 
	Implemented new daily cash posting, credit cards, and automatic debit withdrawals, which included reconciling system postings to the bank statement. Ensuring all monies were being applied accurately to customer accounts. 
	Recommended and implemented scanning of all contract adjustment forms, saving employee time and off site storage costs.
  Professional strengths include: 			 
	Administrative/Office Procedures and Process Improvement 
	Strong People Skills
	Developing Business Relationships
	Implementations of new operating systems
	Excellent Written and Verbal Communication Skills

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Senior manufacturing engineer 10 salaries reported	$105,711 per year
Manufacturing engineer 7 salaries reported	$137,361 per year
Senior assembler 7 salaries reported	$21.69 per hour
Field service engineer 2 salaries reported	$61,500 per year
Technician 3 salaries reported	$20.95 per hour

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