Although there are many who say that they would like to move to Panasonic, I am skeptical because before I got a job here and started working, I thought that HON was a much better workplace than it turned out to be.
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The brwnosers, backstabbers & honlifers should stick it out in cedar creek as they will only bring their poison with them and spread it wherever they go.
This should be a no brainer if you have the option to jump ship. You can either stay with a company that relies on RIFs, footprint reduction, and offshoring operations in order to make itself look healthy and profitable ... or ... you can move on to a company that makes its money through real growth, innovation, and is literally opening new facilities in the US rather than closing them down.
Constantly cutting your way to profitability is NOT a viable strategy for the long term ... just ask GE. Everyone should seriously consider getting out while they have the chance. There is no future for companies that consistently eat themselves alive in order to make the quarterly numbers.
I think the down voters on this thread are just hoping for better. Can't blame them. But that doesn't mean the folks with an objective opinion are wrong. Or Trolls.
Other than the suck ups I really don't care if Olathe people stay or go. I just want to be on the first wave to jump ship. Like some others have posted before I'm going to apply at Panasonic even if the pay is the same due to the toxic work environment that started when SK took over Project Odyssey. Anyway I don't see how Olathe can stay open very far into 2024 when Panasonic will be looking to woo 4,000 direct hires and Garmin is expanding. FWIW - back in early 2022 a director told me on his way out the door that Olathe is to be sold and only the timing needed to be set in stone. The "trolls" sound like they have less information about Panasonic than what I have seen and read online. Their "experience" with Japanese companies probably dates backs back 20 or 30 years. Anyway SK will only give the extreme minimum amount of notice to everyone when they announce the doors are closing and you will only get severance if you hang around to train your replacements.
Did you bother to look at other sites that relate to panasonic A lot of what 7fbq+1lh59O0T stated is true. What I don't get is why you think this is an HR troll?
Last couple of posters never said there weren't opportunities but that the business culture IS different and won't turn out to be for everyone.
Don't know if you're in Olathe or just trolling but if if you are one of the ones that get hired at Panasonic I'd bet that you will be one that hates it. Many won't mind it but it isn't for everyone.
And when Olathe gets transitioned why would HR care what you do in 2024?
It took longer than usual for the management and HR trolls to show up. 🤣
Some folks will think it's better some not. Nicer environment? Yeah. Better pay? Maybe. Culture? If you are a fan of metrics, six sigma, tier boards, tier meetings, 5S, gemba walks, endless repetitive training etc. You'll love it. 10X that stuff as at HON. If you like strolling to the break room occasionally grabbing a snack and coffee and hanging out for a few. Probably not so much. I worked for a Japanese owned company and the expectations were very high. If you punched in on time you were late. If you punched out on time you left early. All about time at your workstation. No personal items of any kind. No tools, pictures, cellphones, nothing. I could go on and on. Some of my coworkers loved it. Not me. BTW I left HON Areo about 5 weeks ago. Seems that I made the right choice so far.
@5dqe+1lh59O0T,
I don't think you get the point.
New, nice building- yes.
Nicer cafeteria- of course.
$10 per hour more than Hon? Doubtful for most.
Work environment? Better than Hon but beware of the Japanese work culture. Just need to understand the approach taken. Shorter breaks, shifting hours etc. Again, all acceptable as long as you go in with eyes open.
Check out the reviews for the reno plant.
Certainly better benefits but the poster who mentioned it may not be the Golden Goose is most likely correct since it seems she/him added "for everyone".
It certainly will be for some. Only time will tell.
LOL! Some people really don't get it.
For many worker bees , including techs, even working an assembly job for $10/hr. more + $2/hr. in better benefits translates to ~$24,000/yr. (not including OT) more in the bank during a period of high inflation. Add on top of that a state-of-the-art facilities with a gym & actual cafeteria, etc. and maybe you begin to see what we mean.
Lifer types who crave a special title of "III" or "IV" along with their names would be better off riding the Titanic down while the band plays on, leaving the rest of us spots in the lifeboats. We appreciate your dedication to Hon!
Just wondering, with the end product being batteries which if they fail testing they get tossed just how many repair techs would they need?
Assembly yes, robotics yes design yes but how does avionics repair techs translate?
Just seems like a lot of folks think panasonic is the Golden Goose which may be true for some but all?
SPARKS, Nev.—A pioneer in making electric-vehicle batteries in the U.S. has a message for newcomers: It takes time to power up.
Japan’s Panasonic Holdings Corp. started building what would become America’s first large-scale EV-battery plant in 2015, at a site owned by Tesla Inc. in the rolling hills outside of Reno, Nev.
After years of training workers and adapting machinery, Panasonic’s battery-production lines now run around the clock churning out some two billion finger-size battery cells a year in a red-and-white facility the size of 90 football fields.
Many battery and auto makers would like to follow. Enticed by federal subsidies, those companies have outlined plans for tens of billions of dollars in factory investments in the U.S. General Motors Co. , Honda Motor Co. , Samsung SDI Co. were among those announcing big plants last year.
“The word ‘gigafactory’ has often been thrown around recently, but just how big one of these is and how many resources it requires is hard to imagine,” said Yasuaki Takamoto, the head of Panasonic’s EV battery business.
People at Panasonic and industry consultants say the early efforts at building EV batteries in the U.S. have shown the ways companies can go astray. One of the biggest issues is training workers in the finicky art of battery making, where the slightest exposure to moisture might mean a whole batch has to be thrown out.
Also, equipment can’t necessarily be shipped from Asia and plopped onto an American assembly line, given U.S. safety regulations and different operating conditions, while equipment customized for the U.S. is in short supply. Consultants say when auto makers and battery makers try to build batteries jointly, careful planning at the outset is needed to prevent squabbling and missed deadlines.
GM Chief Executive Mary Barra last October told Wall Street analysts that a slower-than-expected start at an Ohio battery plant that GM operates with South Korea’s LG Energy Solution would cause the auto maker to miss its EV sales target for North America through 2023.
David Verner, an executive vice president at Gresham Smith, which designs battery facilities for clients in the U.S., said it isn’t unusual to encounter a company that hasn’t worked on a major factory-building project in the past 15 years.
“For a long time with the kind of outsourcing that was going on in the U.S., you were not building as many large manufacturing plants. And the skill set got smaller and smaller and older and older,” he said.
Panasonic experienced both first-mover advantages and headaches when it set up shop in Nevada. In its early years operating at what Tesla calls its gigafactory—a term now often used generally for big EV-battery factories—the Japanese company struggled to boost production volumes.
Panasonic’s Mr. Takamoto said the company underestimated the difficulty of shifting lithium ion-battery production outside of East Asia, the industry’s traditional center.
The company was surprised to find that American workers’ hands were sometimes too big to efficiently operate machinery made in Asia, he said. “It sounds like a joke, but these kinds of issues were frequently encountered in the early stages.”
Boosting production took a year or two more than expected because of issues such as training workers without battery experience and adapting equipment and production processes to them, he said.
anasonic’s battery operations take up more than half of Tesla’s Nevada gigafactory site, about a half-hour drive outside of Reno. The site is surrounded by hills that are dusted with snow in the winter, and wild horses graze close by.
Inside, white corridors the length of more than 20 tennis courts connect various rooms housing long rows of large incubator-resembling machines and batteries whizzing by on belts. Finished batteries are placed on egg-carton-like trays and loaded onto autonomous carts. Then they ride on a track to the other side of the factory, operated separately by Tesla.
Panasonic says the factory is currently capable of producing 38 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity annually, enough to power about 600,000 standard-range Tesla Model 3s.
Panasonic is looking to raise output in Nevada, said Mr. Takamoto, without giving specifics.
The shortage of workers in the state has led Panasonic to develop its biggest expansion plans elsewhere, according to Mr. Takamoto. Last year, the company said it would build a $4 billion plant in De Soto, Kan., which isn’t far from Kansas City and potentially has a larger labor pool to draw from than northern Nevada. Kansas officials offered Panasonic help with educating and recruiting workers, Mr. Takamoto said.
Aided by subsidies included in the U.S. law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, Panasonic is also drawing up plans for an additional plant roughly the size of the one slated for De Soto, with Kansas and Oklahoma studied as potential locations, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Mr. Takamoto said the decision on a location for a potential additional plant would depend on factors including tax incentives and the prospects for attracting workers.
In Kansas, “we are going to start recruiting and if we are able to recruit more people than we thought, that will contribute to how we think about mapping out further bases,” he said.
Mr. Takamoto predicted the Kansas plant would take less time than the one in Nevada to operate at full steam. “Over six years we have learned so much,” he said. “We now have the benefit of that.”
The link from the post below is behind a pay wall.
News video report from KC station:
https://fox4kc.com/news/nevadas-lessons-for-kansas-about-panasonics-ev-battery-plant/
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/first-big-u-s-ev-battery-plant-offers-lessons-as-industry-springs-up-ab8940f7?mod=hp_lead_pos5
For $5 to $10 hour more, better benefits and a cafeteria plus gym, in a heartbeat! Extra benies would be working bathrooms and microwaves.
No. Battery plants have tight margins and unforgiving schedules. Panasonic runs the tesla gigafactory plants. Very few people. 12 hr shifts.