Pros
Global Hexcel is a great company to work for that employs many talented, bright, and driven people. This is not always the case at every facility. Vertically integrated company, meaning your milage may vary. Some extremely capable employees exist, though don't get the recognition they should. Many of the Hexcel sites are available for help during production or usual assistance. Global Hexcel internal systems are reliable, well implemented, and easy to use. Decent work-life balance. Clean and safe work environment. High and management that is not at this facility (CEO, leadership) seems to be in tune with the industries they serve and responsive to the economy and employee needs. Ability to experience many facets of the work due to small team/many hats mentality.
Cons
This facility is overflowing with professionally immature middle management that lacks knowledge of what the facility intends to manufacture. Technically skilled and business oriented leadership and expertise is nonexistent. There is a culture of "passing the buck" with responsibilities, leading needs to be forgotten. Most supervisors or managers produce little meaningful output. Meetings and redundancy is a daily activity. There is little to no growth in terms of processes or any technical development in the realm of the product line. The company is painfully struggling to gain any worthwhile traction on any project due to capability limitations and any mention of this is largely ignored by management due to lack of understanding. Product capability is shameful when compared to any conventional or new manufacturing techniques, especially in an aerospace environment. Customers are under the impression that products are improving with every iteration while the process has many variables that are completely out of control (and no attempt at evaluating and controlling exists). Purchase orders continue to be treated as test and learning activities, which is beyond unethical and grows the gap of customer and Hexcel trust. Many customers are over promised what the product will be able to achieve, due to fundamental misunderstanding of basic ASTM specifications, engineering, and application requirements by individuals that directly connect with the customer. There is a desperate push to land any contract possible, leading the manufacturing team to try to fit a square peg in a round hole, many times further diminishing the global Hexcel reputation. Sales and business development continually pushes manufacturing team to achieve what is truly not possible (often extremely obviously). This frustrates the already limited customer base and typically leads to dead-end “development projects” that tarnish any relationship built between engineering groups. This technology can not replace any existing technology with less expense, less time, and better quality. It is simply not production ready as advertised and the manufacturing approach has remained the same for a large portion of the past decade. Technical teams seem to exist solely to produce work for middle management to copy-paste into e-mails or poorly regurgitate during customer technical meetings. There is an extreme amount of office politics for a facility of this size. Many closed door meetings and a huge “management vs. worker” discrepancy that does not aid any glaring issues.