Pros
If you have limited experience in manufacturing Alpla will take a chance on you and offer opportunity for growth. They are to the extreme of hire from within so upward mobility is common place. Benefits are pretty good. HSA with employer contribution. Wellness program. 401K match at 6%.
Cons
Alpla has a several cons, but the largest is the complete lack of planning. This is a systemic issue that permeates all facets of the organization. Sales Ex: New bottle startup without a way to inspect for customer requirement of a date code. Resolution: plant found solution and pushed back on project to get them to cover cost 6+ months after production began. Engineering Ex: New grinder installed, but it was under-sized. Was unable to complete a single production run without frequent grinder jams. Resolution: eventually moved grinder to another line when new project purchased new, larger, grinder. Operations Ex: plant growth pushes facility to 24/7 operation. Green light to staff up to adequate levels given months too late. Created complete chaos requiring 3 shifts to cover 4. Resolution: still unresolved as they had no concept of market conditions for employment. HR Ex: payroll system upgrade system that, over a year after go-live, still did not have full functionality that prior system did. Resolution, plant will have to devote more time to managing system. Time that they don’t have because of the fire-fighting mentality required to survive. The lack of planning puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the plant which prevents the under-staffed leadership teams from focusing on process improvement and keeps them firefighting. Progress is basically non-existent. Alpla pays much less than market value for virtually all roles. Those that succeed at Alpla typically leave for higher paying jobs. The culture is to hold back resources from the plants, then wipe out the management team when they can’t fix the facility. There is a lack of investing in human capital development so bench strength in the organization is one the shoulder of a few. In the last 5 years, the two St. Peters facilities have replaced: 3 plant managers, 2 operations managers, 4 production managers, 3 quality managers, 2 maintenance managers, 1 logistics manager, 1 downstream engineer, 1 HR manager, countless supervisors, and much more. At an executive level, they have seen just as much turnover. This creates a culture of instability, and control is never really given to the plants from Alpla Hard (Global Headquarter). Lastly, work-life balance is non-existent. 10+ hour days, a couple hours of phone calls/text messages at home. Weekends require infrequent plant presence and very frequent phone calls. This is a very challenging company for anyone with small kids.
