Donaldson Company – “Mismanaged North American Distribution Center”

Pros

Donaldson offers excellent benefits, good work-life balance and claims to have 19 consecutive years of double digit earnings growth. The company fills a unique business niche in the filtration market and enjoys good margins on a majority if it's filtration products.

Cons

As an technician in the 600,000 square foot North American Distribution center I would say that the facility needs to be unionized. The management of the distribution center is bullish, rules with an iron fist and they have fired or let go of more people in the last two years that work there now.

Long term planning is mostly performed from corporate in Minneapolis. To sum up the corporate management; they were having forklifts and material handling equipment assembled at one end of the building while breaking them down and shipping them out at the other end of the building during the implementation. Before the implementation of WMS the DC was shipping approximately 90 trucks per day and during it came to a dead stop for two weeks because they called the shots and the shots were "that things should work themselves out".

Advice to Senior Management

Implement a quality control department that accumulates data and actually does something with it. Focus on strategies to limit employee turnover and increase moral.