Leadership seems to be non-existent. The "Ship full of fools" analogy is very fitting. The company/product lines are either blown where the wind takes them, or being yanked in different directions based on what other companies are doing. This is backed by the 5 major reorgs that I've been through in the 3 years I've been here. If the first 4 were wrong, who says they got it right this time?
There is no consistent goal for the company. There is no vision for what the machines need to do, and what we need to design. There is excessive scrambling as production dates are approaching to include features that the competition has with no data backing up a need for the feature or a customer desire to have that feature. "Because Deere does" is not a valid reason for a feature.
Many of the people in middle/upper management are there because they have been at Cat long enough. There are very few people in decision making positions that have any understanding of the decisions they are making. They claim a "hands off" approach to management. "Hands off" means "I have no idea what you are doing or what you are talking about, so I'll just sit in the corner and nod and smile"
Performance reviews are on a curve. There is a distribution that must be met and is handled at the section level. If you are really good at your job, but not quite as good as the other people, you get screwed. Reviews are also based only on the results of the work you've done in a one year time period. Those really good efficiency improvements that you worked on two years ago, that are just making into machines to be validated, those don't count for anything, sorry. Can't count them the year you did them if they haven't been validated, can't count them the year they were validated because you didn't work on it that year.
Cat Corporate and most of the engineering is in Peoria, IL. It's not exactly an enticing city to live in. Downtown is full of crime and murder, and the north side is suburban sprawl with massive houses on top of each other and no yards.
At some point just having the Cat logo on the machines will stop being enough to sell them and the ship will sink.
