Corporate leadership very centralized in Amsterdam, no representation elsewhere despite most operations being overseas. Corporate direction seems unclear even to local middle management.
R&D is also very clamped down, offering little or no assistance to manufacturing, only throwing out snippets of information to QC/production when absolutely necessary. I worked in QC at a production facility for two years and never even met anyone from R&D once, despite them being only a few miles away in Lenexa. There were many times QC and R&D could have brainstormed and solved problems together. Instead we were only sent samples to test like trained monkeys.
Unclear direction from Amsterdam and Lenexa has led to many in-house projects being talked up by middle management as the next greatest thing and then suddenly and silently abandoned.
Anyone who has passed high school chemistry could work in the QC lab. I don't know why they even require a degree. No challenges provided other than mindless test work. Staff is kept at bare minimum, so nobody has any time to try something new. QC techs were the lowest paid employees at the facility, even less than production employees despite having more education. I don't deny the production guys work hard, but QC could at least get paid as much as them. Heavy, mindless work loads and insulting pay and then management wondered why QC had such severe turnover.
