Pros
- The work can be interesting and rewarding if you take care of your direct reports. That's all within your control. - Great benefits package. - Relatively easy to promote if you tolerate a lot of nonsense. Most people just stay in a position, whether they're qualified or not, and still move up. It's astonishing... but hey, if this works for you, this is the place to move up with stupid ideas if you make the right friends.
Cons
"Line walks" are an absolute joke. It made sense back when the production supervisors actually managed and oversaw metrics... Quite frankly, a supervisor now serves as a misinformed person reporting on something his/her area manager or superintendent hasn't taken the time to explain. There's so much going on in the backend, but the true issue is poor communication between Area/Superintendent/Operations/GM and the production team leadership (Production Supervisors/Team Leads). These line walks often happen with executives and reps from customers like Rolls Royce, Airbus, etc. present and production supervisors aren't armed with the necessary training/education that is required to speak fluently on metrics that they really don't have much influence on. The supervisor essentially serves as a cheerleader to their team and/or shields them when targets aren't met and leadership wants you to light a fire under their bee-hind for poor performance. Again, a lot of times... this is a planning issue that almost never has anything to do with individual performance of production workers.