Continuous Improvement Engineer Jobs

James Hardie Building Products Inc. is the North American leader in fiber cement home siding and exterior design solutions. Hardie® products offer long lasting beauty and endless design possibilities with trusted protection and low maintenance. The company pioneered modern fiber cement building products and continues to invest in innovation to transform the industry. James Hardie is a high-performance organization, with an unwavering commitment to Zero Harm. The company proudly employs a diverse workforce of over 3,000 employees across operations in North America.

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This position supports plants in the North American manufacturing network to meet the product specification, customer requirements, and shareholder expectations by improving process capability and driving process improvement projects utilizing Lean/Six Sigma methods. His or her work efforts will improve attainment of key manufacturing metrics: safety, quality, yield, throughput, and cost efficiency. This person must have extensive working knowledge with continuous water and slurry fluid handling systems, raw material storage and processing, sheeted or heavy industrial processing (i.e., paper, steel, gypsum), and coating operations.

To be effective in this role, the person should have 5+ years of experience working in a large-scale continuous manufacturing site conducting cycle time and bottleneck analysis, waste mapping, process optimization, and new product trials resulting in improved throughput, quality, or yield. This role will be based primarily in Pulaski, VA, but can expect up to 25% travel.

What You’ll Do:

Process Improvement Projects

• Track progress on key process measurements and communicate to stakeholders
• Improve process capability by enabling better operator and equipment inputs
• Partner with plant Engineers in quality, efficiency, and RTY improvement projects
• Improve process traceability and control by upgrading instrumentation and system automation
• Benchmark existing processes against best-in-class systems, both internal and external to the business

Capital Projects

• Deliver all technical tasks to comply with quality, safety, and project management best practices
• Execute projects on time, within scope and budget
• Manage small and medium scale Capital projects that enable process improvement work streams
• Provide engineering support including design and constructability reviews and commissioning assistance on large scale Capital Projects
• Perform project financial analysis and justification

Plant Process Audit Program

• Support process audits as triggered by quality incident investigations
• Partner with plant Quality Manager, plant Engineers, and operators in plant process audits
• Support plants in improvement projects identified through the audit process

What You’ll Bring:

• Experience in laboratory and in process testing
• Tech savvy and curious, with high learning agility and flexibility of style
• Experience in 6 Sigma/Lean continuous improvement environment using key tools and frameworks and successfully rolling them out across manufacturing environments
• Ability to effectively drive change in the workplace.
• Experience in design or deployment of process automation to support improvements in efficiency and effectiveness is desirable
• Ability to build relationships with internal and external stakeholders
• Experience working in a continuous manufacturing environment; thorough understanding of manufacturing processes and procedures
• A strong capability for gap analysis, planning, and priority setting
• Demonstrated ability to apply structured thinking and analysis to complex and ambiguous problems
• 5+ years of experience Continuous Improvement Engineer, Process Engineer, Mechatronics Engineer
• Demonstrated ability to build credibility quickly at all levels within manufacturing
• High attention to detail
• Ability to manage time and work autonomously, remain organised to achieve goals within the desired timeframes
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Chemical, Process, Mechatronics, or Mechanical preferred)
• Excellent decision making and problem-solving skills; the ability to make sound judgements
• Experience in raw materials and raw material processing
• Involvement in change initiatives and projects

Additional Knowledge

• Knowledge in continuous improvement projects
• Dynamic simulations
• Pump and Pipe pressure drop calculations and sizing
• Writing Process and functional descriptions with Process control logics
• Process Simulations and calculations with equipment sizing
• Design and Draw up P&IDs
• Knowledge in process commissioning
• Mass and Energy Balances
• Knowledge in Process Engineering with skills on
• Knowledge in project management and execution

What You’ll Receive:

At James Hardie, we recognize that our success depends on our people. We've worked hard to build a generous and competitive benefits program that demonstrates our commitment to our employees.

• Comprehensive low-cost co-pay Health Insurance; medical, dental, prescription, and vision insurance benefits for every 30+ hour full-time employee. Insurance starts on day one!
• Wellness Program
• 401(k) Retirement plan that will match 100% of employees saved dollars up to the first 6% of your salary
• Employee Assistance Program
• Parental Leave
• And more
• Community Involvement & Sustainable Solutions - Fire Resistant Siding to Help Rebuild the Grizzly Flats Community | James Hardie
• Paid holidays, paid vacation including Jury Duty and bereavement leave

Apply now and come “home” to Hardie!

James Hardie Building Products Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, genetic information, veteran's status, marital status, pregnancy, disability, or any other basis protected by law.