Production Engineer

Vantage Specialty Chemicals

Englewood, OH

Pay: $80,000-$110,000/yr

Shift: Full time

**Position Title:** **Production Engineer**

**Position Summary**

The Englewood site manufactures personal care ingredients and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Our operations include liquid and solid blending, encapsulation, milling, spray congealing, extrusion, and downpacking.

The Production Engineer owns day-to-day manufacturing performance at Englewood. This is a hands-on, floor-based role: working alongside operators, supervisors, maintenance, and quality to monitor processes in real time, solve problems at the root, and continuously improve how our equipment and our people perform. Englewood runs a mix of automated and manual operations, and a significant share of the work is still done by hand. A core part of this role is to learn those manual processes firsthand and bring innovative, practical solutions that improve safety, reduce labor load, and make our operations more efficient and consistent.

**What Success Looks Like**

Success in this role is process optimization grounded in real life on the production floor. The Production Engineer spends time with operators to understand how and why we do what we do, then applies sound engineering principles to make it easier for our people to be successful every shift. That work follows a simple cycle:

• **Understand.** Spend time on the floor to learn each process, how it actually runs, and why it is done the way it is.

• **Measure.** Collect data on real-life performance, including downtime, yields, cycle times, labor content, quality results, and near misses, rather than relying on assumptions.

• **Prioritize.** Rank improvement opportunities by their impact on safety, quality, and productivity, and focus effort where it matters most.

• **Deliver.** Facilitate the actions needed to bring improvements to life by aligning Production, Maintenance, Quality, and vendors, then follow through until results are sustained.

When this cycle is working, it shows up in our results:

• Reduced downtime caused by unplanned events

• Higher production performance through schedule adherence and Right First Time (RFT) manufacturing

• Safer, less labor-intensive operations through targeted automation of manual tasks, with more efficient and consistent processes as a result

• 100% On Time In Full (OTIF) delivery with zero customer complaints, reflecting consistently high quality and reliable product stability

**Essential Duties and Responsibilities**

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• **Daily process monitoring.** Be on the production floor every day, observing and monitoring process performance across blending, encapsulation, milling, spray congealing, extrusion, and downpacking. Learn how and why each step is done, review batch records, process parameters, yields, cycle times, and in-process results, and act quickly on deviations before they affect product quality or the schedule.

• **Data collection and prioritization.** Gather real-life data from the floor through observation, time studies, downtime and deviation records, and operator input. Maintain a prioritized list of improvement opportunities ranked by impact on safety, quality, and productivity, and review it regularly with site leadership.

• **Process optimization.** Specify and run plant trials, and partner with R&D and technical service, to establish and tighten process parameters for safety, quality, throughput, and product stability. Translate results into updated batch instructions, SOPs, and operating windows.

• **Unplanned downtime reduction.** Lead structured root cause analysis (5 Whys, fishbone, FMEA) on equipment failures, process upsets, and batch deviations. Partner with maintenance on preventive and predictive maintenance and critical spares, and track and trend downtime by cause to eliminate repeat events.

• **Schedule adherence.** Work with planning and production supervision to identify and remove the constraints that keep the site from executing the schedule, including changeovers, cleaning, material staging, equipment availability, and staffing.

• **Right First Time.** Identify and eliminate sources of rework, reprocessing, off-spec material, and documentation errors through robust process controls, error-proofing, and clear work instructions.

• **Understand the manual work.** Learn manual operations firsthand by working alongside operators on tasks such as material charging, bag dumping, weighing, material handling, and downpacking. Map each process, measure labor content and variability, and identify the safety, ergonomic, and quality risks that come with manual handling.

• **Automation and innovation.** Lead the site in finding and implementing innovative automation solutions, such as automated material handling and transfer, powder conveying, bulk bag unloading, automated weighing and dispensing, recipe-driven controls, and packaging automation. Build the business case for each