The Senior Process Engineer will provide technical ownership for a family of production process lines, as a critical member of the thermoplastics operational team that is preparing for substantial growth. The senior engineer will be responsible for all technical aspects of continuous production processes, covering multiple product variants, to ensure maximum up-time, with highest efficiency and excellent quality. Additionally, the senior engineer will provide guidance and experienced direction across production support tasks, new product development, equipment installation and commissioning and production integration efforts.
Primary Objectives & Responsibilities of the Position
This is an experienced, senior level, process engineering role, working as part of a small team of engineers. The role will require a high level of professionalism, impeccable communication, ingenuity, flexibility and problem-solving capabilities. A primary objective is to maintain and improve the consistency of the existing production processes, recommend updates to process control, monitoring and to pioneer equipment/technology/process and material upgrades to drive improved efficiencies and cost reductions while maintaining quality.
The senior engineer will bring valuable Aerospace, or similar industry experience, along with Carbon Composite working knowledge. They will become very intimate with the methodology and techniques to produce continuous reinforced advanced thermoplastic composite materials, and will work throughout the value-chain of the product family, from Suppliers through to end customers to drive value-added engineering focused activities.
The senior process engineer will also:
- Provide best in class process engineering knowledge and bring a depth of engineering and technological experience on how to fully productionize a process manufacturing facility that is poised for significant growth.
- Create concise, accurate manufacturing configurations, bills of materials, routers, work instructions. These will be compliant to the QMS system, either ISO 9001 and/or AS9100. Lead the effort to increase efficacy of shop work instructions and methods by employing industry best practices.
- Take a leadership role in establishing and measuring process performance capability using a digital toolkit to instill rigorous process control techniques, real-time. Using SPC methods, control plans, and other statistical, data-driven tools, the engineer will continuously optimize the overall process capability of all thermoplastic processing lines.
- Support effective team-work and sharing of engineering best-practice with a sister company team of engineers based in Europe.
- Recognize and troubleshoot problems associated with all aspects of unidirectional tape manufacturing processes and associated Quality Assurance processes.
- Prioritize and optimize all aspects of environmental health and safety with regards to the tooling, equipment, ergonomic practices and overall production processes.
- Develop clear, logical standard work processes in partnership with the production team, focused on safety, quality and cost control.
- Plan and executes capital projects and process improvement activities as business priorities demand. Manage the project budget and reporting framework to ensure goals and technical project objectives are met on time, within budget.
- Supports investigations and resolves operational non-conformances and customer or supplier related issues.
- Participate in customer site audits/qualifications and visits at TenCate; will represent the company in a professional manner.
- Successfully manage multiple projects.
- Assist as needed with training production associates, supervisors and managers on manufacturing processes.
- Be flexible in working hours if/when business needs dictate. Travel occasionally if necessary (US and Europe mainly) to support customer/supplier/internal projects and engineering activities.