Process Engineer

Pretium Packaging

Aurora, IL

Estimated pay: Est. $20–$31/hr (market estimate, not employer-stated)

**Grow boldly with Pretium!**

Pretium Packaging is searching for a talented, hands-on **Process Engineer for** our plant in **Aurora, Illinois.**

**About Us:**

Pretium Packaging, founded in 1992, is a leading supplier of injection-blow molded plastic containers, known for delivering superior quality, value, and customer service. With 21 manufacturing locations across North America, we provide innovative, high-performance packaging solutions to a diverse portfolio of brand owners in the U.S. and Canada.

**What You'll Do:**

The Process Engineer is the plant technical authority for establishing, optimizing, and sustaining capable molding processes. Approximately 80% of the role is focused on hands-on technical process engineering, including process development, SPC and capability analysis, molding trials and validation, cycle-time and part-weight optimization, defect elimination, tooling and cavity performance, equipment troubleshooting, and new-product or new-mold launch support. The remaining approximately 20% applies structured continuous improvement methods to prioritize technical losses, lead focused improvement work, sustain gains, and connect validated engineering results to plant performance.

**Responsibilities:**

**Process Development, Capability, and Control:**

• Establish, document, and maintain robust molding process windows, setup standards, centerline settings, and operating limits for assigned equipment, molds, materials, and products.
• Apply statistical process control, control charts, process capability analysis, and trend analysis to evaluate stability and performance of critical process and product characteristics.
• Lead capability studies, process trials, designed experiments, first-article runs, and production validations; document conclusions and translate findings into approved standards and control plans.
• Diagnose sources of variation related to machine conditions, mold performance, resin, colorant, drying, temperature, pressure, velocity, cooling, environment, and operator methods.
• Partner with Quality to define critical-to-quality characteristics, sampling plans, measurement methods, reaction plans, and acceptance criteria; support measurement-system evaluation when needed.
• Use data to distinguish common-cause from special-cause variation and implement corrective actions that improve repeatability, first-pass yield, and customer performance.
• Molding Process Optimization and Material Efficiency
• Optimize cycle time across mold close, fill, pack/hold, cooling, recovery, mold open, ejection, trimming, and part handling while protecting quality, tooling, and equipment.
• Improve part-weight consistency and identify safe lightweighting opportunities through controlled trials, dimensional and functional verification, resin-behavior understanding, and documented approval.
• Analyze actual part weight against specification and BOM standards; support correction of standards when validated data shows a gap.
• Optimize injection, injection blow molding, and stretch blow molding parameters as applicable, including temperature profiles, pressures, speeds, timing, cooling, air systems, material conditioning, and downstream equipment settings.
• Reduce scrap and recurring defects through technical root-cause analysis of conditions such as flash, short shots, sink, warp, burns, contamination, dimensional variation, wall-distribution issues, gate or neck defects, and trim-related defects.
• Improve mold and cavity performance by identifying blocked or unstable cavities, cavity-to-cavity variation, cooling imbalance, venting issues, wear, alignment problems, and tooling conditions requiring maintenance or engineering support.

**Technical Troubleshooting and Production Support:**

• Provide hands-on support for startups, changeovers, process interruptions, chronic performance losses, and difficult quality problems; restore the process to validated conditions before optimizing.
• Set up and adjust molding machines, trimmers, labelers, reamers, inspection systems, conveyors, auxiliaries, and related automation; verify safe and correct sequence timing.
• Troubleshoot equipment and control-system issues in partnership with Maintenance and Controls resources, including sensors, heaters, pneumatics, hydraulics, water systems, drives, and machine interfaces.
• Review daily process checks, setup sheets, alarms, downtime, scrap, cavity status, and quality data to identify deviations requiring immediate containment or deeper technical investigation.
• Develop clear technical countermeasures and escalation criteria when permanent resolution requires tooling repair, equipment modification, capital, supplier support, or product-design review.

**New Products, Tooling, and Engineering Change:**

• Process new molds, tooling, materials, and products from initial trial through production release, establishing validated parameters and documented operating ranges.
• Participate in technical reviews fo