Lean Manufacturing Engineer

Position Summary:Lean Manufacturing Engineer will help accelerate the deployment of Lean Manufacturing across our operations. This role is for a practical, floor-driven improvement leader who can work directly with production, packaging, quality, maintenance, warehouse, and planning teams to improve flow, reduce waste, increase throughput, and build a disciplined daily improvement culture. This is not a theoretical Lean role. This person must be able to observe the process, identify waste, engage the team, build practical countermeasures, and help deliver measurable operational results.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Key Responsibilities

Lean Deployment and Shop-Floor Improvement

• Create the Lean deployment Roadmap, with specific timelines to achieve both operational and financial results through Llean implementation.
• Support the deployment of Lean Manufacturing principles, systems, and behaviors across production areas.
• Lead hands-on improvement activities in all Value-Stream areas such as packaging, warehouse, and support operations.
• Work directly with supervisors, operators, technicians, maintenance, quality, and planning teams to identify and eliminate waste.
• Facilitate kaizen events and rapid improvement activities focused on flow, quality, productivity, changeover reduction, and schedule adherence.
• Help build a culture of daily problem solving, visual management, standard work, and accountability.

Mixed-Model Value Stream Design

• Analyze current-state value streams and identify opportunities to improve flow, reduce waiting, eliminate bottlenecks, and improve schedule stability.
• Design improved future-state value streams for mixed-product, mixed-volume manufacturing environments.
• Support value stream mapping, material flow design, line balancing, work sequencing, supermarket/pull concepts, and flow improvement.
• Help connect upstream processes, such as material readiness, pre-weight, and compounding, with downstream packaging execution.
• Identify constraints and support actions to increase throughput through the end-to-end value stream.

5S and Visual Workplace

• Lead practical 5S implementation in production, warehouse, tooling, staging, changeover, and support areas.
• Develop visual standards that make abnormal conditions easy to see.
• Create and sustain workplace organization standards for tools, parts, documents, materials, and equipment.
• Coach supervisors and operators on 5S ownership, audit routines, and sustainment behaviors.

SMED and Changeover Reduction

• Lead SMED/changeover improvement activities across packaging and manufacturing processes.
• Separate internal and external changeover work.
• Improve changeover preparation, staging, tooling readiness, line clearance, cleaning, setup, verification, and start-up.
• Develop changeover standard work, checklists, readiness boards, and adherence tracking.
• Partner with maintenance, quality, warehouse, and production to reduce waiting, searching, rework, and approval delays during changeovers.

Standard Work and Daily Management

• Develop and implement standard work for operators, team leads, supervisors, and support functions.
• Support the design and use of Tier 1 and Tier 2 daily management boards.
• Help teams use plan-vs-actual thinking, gap identification, countermeasures, and escalation discipline.
• Coach leaders and teams to solve problems at the source instead of relying on firefighting.
• Build practical visual controls for performance, safety, quality, delivery, productivity, and action follow-up.

Data, Metrics, and Results

• Analyze operational performance data to identify losses, trends, bottlenecks, and improvement priorities.
• Track and report improvement results related to throughput, downtime, changeover time, labor productivity, quality, safety, and schedule adherence.
• Convert observations into actionable improvement plans with owners, timing, expected impact, and follow-up.
• Support root-cause analysis and corrective action for recurring operational problems.

Qualifications

Essential Skills and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Operations Management, or related technical field preferred.
• Minimum 5 years of hands-on Lean Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, or Manufacturing Engineering experience.
• Direct experience working in a manufacturing environment with operators, supervisors, production leaders, maintenance, quality, and supply chain teams.
• Strong practical knowledge of Lean tools and systems, including:
  • Value Stream Mapping
  • Mixed-model flow
  • 5S and visual workplace
  • SMED/changeover reduction
  • Standard work
  • Line balancing
  • Waste elimination
  • Daily management
  • Root-cause problem solving
  • Kaizen facilitation
• Demonstrated ability to lead improvement work on the shop floor, not only from a desk.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence without formal authority.
• Ability to manage multiple improvement priorities while maintaining focus on measurable results.
• Strong bias for action, follow-through, and practical execution.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications:

• Experience improving mixed-model packaging or batch-based manufacturing value streams.
• Knowledge of OEE, schedule adherence, throughput improvement, material readiness, and bottleneck management.
• Experience supporting Lean transformation or operating system deployment.
• Bilingual English/Spanish is a plus.

Work Environment:

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. There are no physical demand for the position.

The above job description is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of duties and standards of the position.  Incumbents will follow any other instructions, and perform any other related duties, as assigned by their supervisor.