ATS Automation Tooling Reviews

Pros

- learn about automation
- job variety
- great work force
- get to see new products before they come out

Cons

- pay and benefits not great
- long hours are the general norm
- morale is low due to a number of layoffs on the manufacturing side
- red tape has increased

Advice to Senior Management

- reduce some of red tape to get things done
- ensure that things can happen quickly if they need to

Pros

Salary was good.
Interesting, diverse customer base.
ATS is working to develop engineering innovations to improve the automation process of machine design.

Cons

Management has no backbone when discussing issues with more senior team members. Employees will often defer to the more senior even if they have a better understanding of the issue at hand.
The expectation is that employees are not too bright or will do the wrong thing, so rules are stringent and don't always allow for independent thoughts or actions.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior/Executive management can be heavy handed and disrespectful to employees and should work on communicating with the team on hurdles as well as achievements. I was often completely unaware of some projects that could have a great impact to the company and/or community. ATS team members are not proud or excited about working there and talent will continue to exit.

Pros

Working with automation and new products coming to market has always been enjoyable.

Cons

Recently I spend far too much time worrying whether or not I will be the next one to be let go. Management seems to prefer to let go seasoned employees and replace them with
lower salaried and less experienced personnel. This is good for short term profits, but the company ends up with alot of employees that do not know what they are doing.

Pros

- Projects are diverse and challenging, customers from various industries
- A great place to develop one's technical aptitude, excellent for co-op students & fresh grads
- Chance to develop one's soft skills through project management tasks and interaction with customers of all levels
- Travel opportunities

Cons

- No formal employee development plan, trainings are almost non-existing
- Very flat organization at the engineering level, no sense of career progression, rather demotivating
- Employees are constantly moved from/to projects, and rarely stay on a project from start to finish
- No accountability

Advice to Senior Management

- Project management needs to do a better job at planning, controlling projects and motivating employees
- Need to have clearly defined job functions and career progression for every position in every department

Pros

- Projects are always challenging
- Great base from which to learn about manufacturing in various industries

Cons

- You'll remain in the same position forever
- Not much by way of formal training
- Poor raises

Advice to Senior Management

Value employees that constantly perform

Pros

Great technology and global customer base

Cons

Punitive organization with a focus on short term gains to influence stock

Advice to Senior Management

Resign and let leaders that know the industry drive growth and profitability

Pros

-Cutting edge technology with limitless amounts of things to learn and test your abilities.
-Variability of tasks from day to day

Cons

- When it is busy there is little to know breathing time.
- Designers have too much of a care free attitude or parts requirements which causes additional work for purchasing.
- NO ACCOUNTABILITY

Advice to Senior Management

-Stop always thinking about just the share prices and remember the little guys doing the work once in a while. You may end up with more buy in.
- Planning things out is not a bad thing. Try looking at the short and long term of what you are doing and consider how you are rolling things out and see if it makes sense.

Pros

ATS has a large and talented employee base, people are friendly and willing to help when asked. Benefits are generally up to industry standard, with a couple of exceptions (see below).

Cons

General morale is fairly low, a few years of poor financial performance with layoffs have contributed to this. Managers, though excellent technically, have been poorly trained on the manegerial and people management aspects of their jobs, making them great resources for the technical aspects of your job but difficult to approach with normal employee issues, including lack of proper feedback, recognician, annual reviews, career advancement, etc. Employee benefits missing paid sick days. When sick, you're expected to make up the time or just not get paid.

Advice to Senior Management

Proper management and leadership training for all managers would go a long way as would the adoption of industry standard processes and procedures (PMI)

Pros

The company has a good reputation.
There is very limited travel for project managers.
The portoflio gives you a chance to work with all kinds of different techologies.
The customer base is very wide

Cons

The benefits are pretty ordinary
The company is restructuring/downsizing business units - which means no one is safe
The new board of directors is making a lot of significant changes and not really good at communicating the reasons to the staff
The senior management is in a ''lower cost'' mindset that is beginning to affect the quality of the product
Same ''low cost'' philosophy is leading to a lot of outsourcing.

Advice to Senior Management

More communication guys! Some of the changes you are making are good, but you need to inform your staff!

Pros

varied and innovative technologies, always being able to work on something new; very creative job. The company still claims to be the world's largest automation systems provider - one has to wonder with all the plant closures.

Cons

instability in corporate management; current executive team is ruthless. Anthony Caputo (current CEO) does not know automation and is never available to the employees. His team is also inexperienced in automation. Over the last 5 years probably about 50% of the talent (engineers, managers, toolmakers) have left due to the instable environment that has been created.

Advice to Senior Management

in the custom systems integration industry, engineers are not equal - work to keep the talent. Don't micromanage; the level of bureaucracy at the flagship division in cambridge is insane. the environment promotes thinking of oneself, of being "exclusive" rather than "inclusive", of being forced to justify decision - very low trust