Woodward reviews

As the size of Woodward has increased, its ability to be responsive to the market and customer's needs, wants, and desires has slowed to a crawl. As a global company, there are several cultures that work for the company. These different cultures are attempting to determine the needs of a market that they are vastly unfamiliar with. Additionally there is a high level of frustration when dealing with fellow employees in different countries that do not understand North American markets and continue to develop products for their own market that do not fit into this market. The best way I can put this is that there are a lot of people talking, but not a lot of communication.

Woodward is neither fast past, exciting, or efficient. Mobility is fairly limited as the positions up the corporate ladder tend to remain filled for long periods, or hired outside the company. These and other attributes are par for the course for large companies, and Woodward is no exception. Woodward's largest customers are very very large, and we model ourselves much like they do in terms of engineering speed and process inefficiencies. Additionally, every year or two the senior management has pushed forward some sort of reorganization of the management structure. The impacts are miminal except to the reporting stucture, but it is a concern that our sales structure seems to lack traction to succeed. Woodward tends to expand by purchasing other companies rather than organic growth of its own product lines. While in general it will treat the acquisitions well, Woodward will take its time fully integrating the company and the acquired persons may never feel fully integrated. Finally, if you are to work in the sales area, you'll find that Woodward lacks the resources to support new engineering projects more often than not. This can be frustrating when one realizes how much new business we turn away.