Long Way To Go - Needs a Complete Foundational Process and Cultural Rebuild (Lakewood) - Anonymous employee Mesa Laboratories Employee Review

Corporate restructuring is frequent. Could be small layoffs 1-2 times per year until they get their production/supply chain issues resolved. This could be attributed to poor executive leadership with knee-jerk, investor-first mentalities. CEO is essentially non-existent (and also was visibly inebriated at a recent company party) with rare company-wide communication. In all of 2022, CEO only sent out TWO company-wide emails. From 2020-2022, maybe a total of 3-4 emails. Came into the office a whopping 4-5 times even though I believe he lives locally. I'm sure he spends a lot of time being visible to shareholders and the handful of VPs, but the rest of the company rarely sees or hears from the guy. Leadership lacks focus on what this site really needs - a full temporary shut down and remediation of both the product design (all products) and manufacturing processes (lots of tribal knowledge). New open office layout is horrific. Wildly distracting, loud, poor lighting, but the programmable sit/stand desks and multiple monitors are nice, and definitely an improvement over the dingy disaster that it used to be. This is supposed to be the corporate headquarters, but even after the million-dollar revamp, it pales in comparison to the sweet place Mesa built at their Bozeman location. Heavy, heavy turnover. Wasn't a month that went by that we were told about yet another person that left (or was let go or laid off). Very cryptic comms from management about those situations, likely in a desperate attempt to keep those that remained on board and not following the rest out the door. Quality engineering / assurance team is woefully understaffed. I regularly felt sorry that the team had such a problem getting resourcing approvals and that an entire manufacturing site's QA team consisted of so few people. Often heard "quality is everyone's responsibility", which is a lean way of saying "just do their jobs, too". WAY TOO many meetings. Every product has a "DM" (daily management) that is borne from the Agile project management style, but are run more like micromanagement meetings. And every one of them is conducted on a Teams video chat, even if the people that regularly attend are sitting in the building. I probably spent 85% of my weekly time on meetings - most of which were around problems that could have been solved with a quick email or chat in the hall. Speaking of meetings, this site has a bizarre situation where people that come in to the office physically all sit side-by-side in the open office concept with headphones on Teams meetings. Rarely do they congregate in a conference room, even with most of the staff onsite. You'd regularly find yourself on a Teams video meeting with others who were literally sitting right next to you, in the same meeting. Lack of any top-down direction - company goals are not clearly communicated, or even known. The company may as well just state that their main goal is "get product out the door and make us money and do so with the resources you have". Company is 35+ years old, but feels and acts like a discombobulated startup with old, average products and poor manufacturing methods that need overhauled. Lots of people doing work that is completely outside of their job descriptions simply because they still stick to this lean employment / startup concept of resourcing (massive turnover doesn't help). Lots of window dressing and corporate speak on how they are trying to improve everything from culture to quality of the products themselves, but very little action. Entire place is nothing more than a collection of fire fighters trying to figure out how to overcome their own internal work flow problems and get product out to customers, while dealing with the loss of tribal knowledge from frequently-departing personnel. No organic design - all products are 100% minimally-viable start up acquisitions that were hastily bought with no due diligence and shipped to the Lakewood site, full of design and production issues. Production equipment works and is creative and novel, but is regularly failing due to the prototype (startup), minimally-viable nature of the product and the assembly methods and poor to no preventative maintenance. Teams spend all of their time band-aiding short term to keep product moving out the door (which regularly is returned for quality issues), with almost zero time developing and implementing long-term solutions. No project management whatsoever. They are trying, but it's pretty futile given the amount of firefighting that takes priority just to keep the lights on and customers from running to competitors. Toxic leaders that are frequently heard yelling at others, interrupting, very "my way or the highway". In one instance, a particular new leader openly stated in a meeting (with that person on the call) that their best, most-tenured employee "didn't have a clue what they were talking about...never knows what they are talking about...don't listen to that person" - even though they were promoted to a lead position by that same individual. Most people in meetings with this individual have now learned to sit quiet and let them just run the show. Great culture! A good percentage of local staff (lots of management and 100% of the executives) opts to work remotely - rarely, if ever, appearing in the office. Some people I worked with during my time there, I never met in person - only on Teams meetings, and many of those lived right down the street. I'm all about a good hybrid schedule, but once in a while, come in to the office and say hello. Operations focused too much, too early on lean initiatives. Focus on improving processes, documentation focus, resources, equipment, training, and foundational remediation before implementing lean tactics. This facility and its people simply aren't ready (proverbial cart before the horse). While they do make a couple of medical devices at this site, most of the leadership has never worked in an actual medical device company, and it shows - particularly in that they still have woefully inadequate Quality Engineering resources. Ultimately, the company makes and sells products that are designed to help other manufacturers better control their assembly processes, which is quite an awkward position for a company that themselves have very little control over their own processes.