production associate

welder

team member

team leader

human resources specialist

Toyotetsu

Not a bad place to work but there is a LOT of drama within the entire company. 

Production team members you’re like a prisoner making license plates. It’s very monotonous.

The pay is decent but if you’re a temp employee as most are all the wonderful benefits they advertise you do not get. 

The company atmosphere isn’t terrible but there’s a lot of individuals in higher positions not due to their skill or value but due to who they know. A lot of “cushy” jobs for your friends and such if you understand what I mean. Incompetent and ignorant people making six figures or more doing a job they are not qualified for overseeing individuals who probably know more than they do. It’s absolutely silly. Not to mention absolutely ridiculous redundancy within positions. You have several individuals doing the job of one in certain instances. All for some “good jobs for my pals.” 

You can move up but it can be difficult especially if higher ups have a chip on their shoulder. 

Pay is not that great compared to other factories and the turnover is insane. 

As for most places there is good and bad and this will place is just okay. It’s a job and if you’re willing to “kiss up” to higher individuals you may be able pursue better opportunities.

At the end of the day It’s a job. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself. Don't get caught up in the drama and find good people within the company and stick with them. Work hard and get some experience and move on to bigger and better opportunities plain and simple. You’ll thank yourself for that. 

I was on a fairly easy conveyance course at first. Delivering mostly metal welding parts to machine operators. It was simple but puts a stress on you body after so many hours of sitting down. I was moved to a substantially harder course as most jobs like this go, the better you are, the harder you have it. So my shifts turned very stressful trying to match the speed that my parts were needing to be delivered. However it was not all bad, the stresses of of being in a constant hurry all day made me into a great forklift driver. Week after week I found my course getting easier and easier. I learned to manage my time very carefully. My managers were nice with an awesome sense of humor. They would help me out when they could. My peers and coworkers were typical people just trying to make a living. Some were a little more pessimistic as to others who were energetic and took the jobs to heart, but I liked the variety. The hardest part of my job was the hours. Being at work 9 to 12 hours a day. 5pm to 5am on a lot of days and up to 6 days a week. It is very hard to get even the basic chores or errands done, at least if you want to sleep a full night it is. I did however enjoy the income that the job was providing, it was more than enough to pay my bills. I actually had spare money, just no time to spend it. Plus I became an excellent forklift driver, witch is a useful skill in a lot of work places.

Typical day at work is fast paced but wasn't a problem. I learned more than ever about production, metals, and welding on smaller scale than what certified welders do of course. Management as much as I hate to admit wasn't on same page with themselves to be able to  allow production to know what goals they needed to meet, lots of time till last minute. I guess this would happen like with any customer orders but was daily with five different people in management saying five different things does complicate things. Goals did get met just the same. Enjoyed most co-workers. Production in high volume and fast paced surroundings is tough work. Handful of us always went above and beyond to accomplish what was required.Hardest part was never being good enough or doing enough. Groups of selected employees were always depended upon which isn't a bad thing but one's who couldn't or wouldn't help and allowed to behave this way makes being part of a TEAM hard. The most enjoyable part of this job was having a great Team Leader. It made all of the other things fit together great. The good and the bad wasn't at all unbearable when you have one who can lead by example. It keeps the system and production up and running. So many places lose this but though I'm not employed with this company they do have a handful of great leaders and anyone running production can be where you find today very hard workers.    

Toyotetsu has a really great ideas that would make a great and ideal place to work. The problem is that management is unable to make their own guiding theories work. The principals of Kaizan (Continuous Improvement) is a great one, the problem is that no matter how many times you report an issue to your Group Lead (Supervisor) they can't get it approved. All change that happens takes place because a high level manager thought of it. They don't listen to the people doing the work on how to make the work better. They don't even ask the workers for suggestions when they want to improve a process??! 

My Group Lead liked to play favorites and doesn't make their favorite Team Members follow the rules. There are repercussions if any issues are brought to them about another Team Member. They try to find where you are making mistakes and make a big deal out of it but ignore and don't correct the other Team Member who is their Friend.

You are either a Part of the Brother-Team(the good ole buddy system) or you are a outsider that has too reach higher. Some Temporary had more rights than the full time employees.    Those in the good ole system are protected and enjoy their time.   Those that are not are JUDGED harshly and expected to be FLAWLESS.   They do not support those who care about the people and the company.   New ideas are NOT valued and  accepted by management and nothing becomes.  Those in the famed Good Ole Boy System get pizza and money for others ideas.    Attendance is based and looked at as though you are the problem   Unless your in with the one of the Group Leads  who will protect you at all cost.  Certain one's enjoyed certain advantage's to being friends with Group Leaders(Example's of weekend off, longer breaks, better job's).   Very little pay raises for some and others have jumped 3 or 4 dollars because of certain guidelines.  Again, depends on the which side of the system your a part of.  Company does everything around first shift.  Picnic's are what ever company function is happening you will have to come in during sleep time to participate.  Love work and being involved.  Was not the case with this company. 72-75  Hours a week is the common.... Do Not Recommend!

Working as a design engineer will accumulate to sending e-mails back and forth between Toyota and Japan.  The requirements that they list are a lie as several people who have performed this work in the past do not hold bachelor's or associate's degrees in engineering or have any experience with automotive.  Toyotetsu keeps all of their processes secret and will not train personnel outside of Japan in their techniques.  The new model department in Michigan has no room for advancement as many of the members of the Kentucky office will take open positions as they become available.  All of the actual business is done in Kentucky, so do not become invested in the Michigan office if you are looking to advance into a manager position from this position.  If you are looking for a job in which you can sleep at your desk, get rusty on your engineering skills, and be evaluated on the number of e-mails and phone calls sent in a single day then this is the job for you.  There will be no simulations, evaluations, drawing creation, or parts creation.  That is all handled by the offices in Japan.  Get your 2 years here and then get out. 

In 7 years of working at this place I quickly realized that moving up in this company has to do all with who you know and who your friends with. If you ever step out of line and make a member of management dislike you say goodbye to ever trying to advance your career here. The communication between shifts and between departments is more akin to sibling rivalry of blaming each other rather than a professional workplace. For the area the pay is decent in the benefits are decent but that's all there is good to say about the place. If you end up in stamping or welding I feel for you because you will no longer have a work-life balance it will just be work and when the other shift doesn't get it done you'll get blamed for it and when you don't get it done the other shift will be blamed for it it's one big finger pointing. If you end up in QA get ready for everyone in the factory to hate you because the culture at TTAI is not quality first it's production numbers first safety second quality last

The company is alright. Benefits were decent.

The problems come in, with work life balance. 

There are ONLY 2 shifts at the mfg. company. 

More often than not. 12 hour days.
6 days a week. (at least this was the case when I worked there)
Sometimes 7 days a week. (you better have help at home to manage laundry and stuff)

The Pay is Bi-weekly as well, which makes things REALLY rough, logistics wise. 

They do have employee appreciate events. But really when your tired as a dog, from all the overtime, they are hard to appreciate. 

The logistics of the company, in my opinion, are a little messed up. When I worked there, it seemed like "over production" & container shortages for parts, was a CONSTANT. 

Then the containers get wet, then QA gets involved & they ask you why... 

Its just something that you can't help. If the only containers you got are outside, and they get rained on, what are you supposed to do?

Then TRUCKs, don't always bring back empties... that you need, b/c the plant they send the containers to, hasn't used up all the parts, or just hasn't sent them back for WHATEVER reason... 

Really a big "Clusterf--k". 

You'll be working Monday night up until Saturday morning 6:30 pm to 6:30 AM (12 hours) every day MINIMUM. That doesn't include mandatory production Saturdays or coming in Saturday and Sunday because your line is behind on parts, which it almost always is due to robotic welding machinery always breaking. The group leaders honestly don't care bout anyone but themselves and the plant is hot right now because they said the CDC told them they weren't allowed to run fans or A/C because of covid, but every factory in Kentucky is running fans except them, so enjoy sweating every day 12 hours a day while running around with heavy parts if you're unlucky enough to get put on a heavy manual labor line. This job does not pay well enough for temps or new hires without experience pay to be worth working here as the pay is roughly $13-$16 an hour while experienced hires make $20/h.

Toyotetsu was very enjoyable, organized with very good planning, culture change was fresh and rewarding.  Customer being Toyota was consistent in planning and pull demands.  Past and current companies would never operate as Japanese, you must remain committed to TPS and make it work, very few deviations to TPS.  Learned and respected true meaning to root cause problems, which makes counter-measures easy to implement, accurate and cost viable.   Focus was not always on machine, of course if possible it would be done, but also with people, training, how to do, why to do, this idea is very different concept to US manufacturing, as a machine solution to every problem is generally sought.   Very good product tracing systems assisted immensely determining root cause.  I reached a new level of understanding with Danger Prevention training, KY Training.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production associate 9 salaries reported	$19.63 per hour
Welder 1 salary reported	$20.75 per hour
Team member 1 salary reported	$20.08 per hour
Team leader 9 salaries reported	$20.82 per hour
Human resources specialist 6 salaries reported	$41,750 per year

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