The Plant Continuous Improvement Manager’s responsibilities are to:
- Use observation, questioning and data measurement to fully understand and categorize yield and uptime issues.
- Identify and eliminate sources of variation that lead to changes to the Standard Operating Condition (SOC).
- Facilitate problem solving to root cause elimination and permanent reduction of variance.
- Analyze lines for constraints and bottlenecks to achieve continuous flow.
- Advocate for the Voice of the Customer (VOC) via process capability and defect elimination.
- Assess standard work artifacts and training to better understand the origin of production flow issues.
- Contract or otherwise coordinate third parties to perform equipment or system assessments.
- Conduct timing and point of loss yield studies to identify the loss Pareto.
- Perform data analysis and prepare written reports in order make visible the true nature of problems and opportunities.
- Develop a detailed root cause analysis for each problem, where each root cause is validated through testing, i.e. the condition or defect can be turned on or off.
- Develop countermeasures that could range from basic problem containment to system repair to equipment replacement.
- Generate and communicate implementation plans using Gantt charts and work breakdown structures.
- Coordinate central Operations & Engineering resources or third parties to staff implementation plans as necessary.
- Formulate strategic improvement hypotheses within the A3 Thinking process.
- Facilitate Problem Solving and Kaizen events by leveraging/modeling the DMAIC process.
- Lead Daily Management processes to validate that actions lead to desired performance improvements.
- Support deployment of Lean tools such as 5S, Visual Factory Aids, SMED concepts, VSM, VOC and Poke Yoke to improve plant safety, quality and throughput performance.
- Proactively seek problems that need to be solved and quantify the anticipated benefit of solving each particular problem.
- Follow through to assess and report on achieving desired improvements.
- Develop and ensure appropriate standard work is developed and in place to minimize problem reoccurrence.
- Fill in for Plant Lead team roles in their absence
- Collaborate with the Corporate CI team to achieve plant and company goals
Core Proficiencies and Skills
The following skills and proficiencies are essential requirements of the position:
- Strong understanding of Operational Excellence, Lean principals, statistics and data analysis.
- Proficient applying DMAIC or PDCA continuous improvement methodologies.
- Deep knowledge in production line flow, yield and uptime analysis for improvement.
- Knowledge of line design that optimizes line uptime i.e. throughput, queueing, accumulation and bottleneck analysis.
- Skilled applying manual line measurements (e.g. Tic Charts) and other data collection methods and measurement methods to understand unit flow and loss characteristics
- Experienced in optimizing the performance of:
o Factory systems and line process inputs
o Information flow
o Raw materials flow, conveyance, blending, and drying systems
o Blow Molder lines for throughput
o Injection Molding lines for capability
o Quality systems for defect elimination
o EHS systems for a safe working environment
o Operational systems for waste elimination
o People development for engagement and ownership
- Skilled in facilitation of Problem solving, FMEA, Kaizen, Lean tools
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Strong coaching and mentoring skills
- Ability to get work accomplished through influence versus authority
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