Entire previous Northwood Continuous Improvement Engineering Department has left by beginning of March 2022.
Department was started in August 2020 and ended up containing two Engineers (myself included) and a Manager; my manager had years of industry experience in Continuous Improvement and a bachelor’s of science in engineering and an MBA, and my engineer colleague had decades of experience in all facets of continuous improvement and had also been a CI consultant for many companies, most notably Toyota, yes THE Toyota. The TruStile Northwood Management and Leaders were not interested whatsoever in legitimate Continuous Improvement, ignored suggestions, failed to hold up their end of projects, intentionally botched projects because they hadn’t thought of them, and instead tried to push their own poor interpretation of CI with no formal or previous experience in lean manufacturing, 5S, or anything CI related.
I had no idea how toxic the Northwood office was until I left for another job and worked in a place where people just did their work, knew how to collaborate and work in teams, treated others with general decency and respect, and weren’t constantly throwing each other under the bus to please/look good to the CEO. TruStile compensation is well below industry averages, and in years with non-crazy inflation the best raise I got was a little over 2%. When I left for my new job, the new job compensation was a 30% raise over TruStile, TruStile never even proposed to me a counter-offer, and was the best move I ever made professionally and for my mental health.
Don’t work for TruStile in Northwood or Denver, overall, it’s a low-quality employer. Lots of brain drain has occurred and good talent have left in droves from both sites and all departments in the past year and a half. If there’s hope for things turning around at TruStile, Marvin is going to have to completely clean house, including every nook and cranny of the management structure for both Denver and Northwood sites.
