International Paper Hiring for Manufacturing Excellence Area Leader at Rome Full Time

Manufacturing Excellence Area Leader

Description:

International Paper (NYSE: IP) is a leading global supplier of renewable fiber-based products. We produce corrugated packaging products that protect and promote goods, and enable worldwide commerce, and pulp for diapers, tissue and other personal care products that promote health and wellness. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., we employ approximately 38,000 colleagues globally. We serve customers worldwide, with manufacturing operations in North America, Latin America, North Africa and Europe. Net sales for 2021 were $19.4 billion. Additional information can be found by visiting InternationalPaper.com.

This is a position with a direct line to the Manager of Manufacturing Excellence.

The Manufacturing Excellence Area Leader is strictly an “improve” role and should therefore not have responsibility for day-to-day operations. They must, however, maintain awareness of the department’s day-to-day issues and problems while staying focused on proactive, long-term progress on improvement.

The ME Area Leader must ensure close coordination with resources at all levels of the organization, including Business Unit Managers, Area Managers, and other “improve” resources (reliability engineers, process engineers and others), to ensure the department’s improvement plan is coordinated and cohesive. These resources and their supervisors must be comfortable with the ME Area Leader having a role in setting and managing their priorities. The ME Area Leader will coordinate with the department and Manager of ME all improvement activities in the department, including reliability improvement projects, cost reduction campaigns and process improvement efforts.

EXPERIENCE / BACKGROUND

It is preferred that the ME Area Leader role be filled from within the IP manufacturing organization, by an individual with a strong manufacturing management background and a track record of achieving consistent, significant results through systems and teams. Because this role relies heavily on the individual’s ability to influence those at every level in the department’s organization and drive action toward improvement, it is essential that the ME Area Leader possess the soft skills outlined in this document to a high degree, particularly those described in the Career Architect Competencies section.

Experience with continuous improvement concepts and tools is preferred but not required. It is recommended that the ME Area Leader certify at the “green belt level” on the ME Process within 18 months

A continuous improvement professional from outside the organization may be considered for this role in certain limited situations. This individual should have clearly demonstrated success at the green belt level and will be expected to certify as a ME Process green belt very quickly. There must be an aggressive plan in place to immerse this person in our manufacturing processes within six months. This individual must be able to quickly establish credibility throughout the mill organization.

DETAILED REPONSIBILITIES

Benchmarking (about 10% of time)

• R gap identification and validation

• Identify “key drivers” for improvement and ensure they are tracked and improving

• Overseeing the process of developing the plan to close the gap

• Marrying limited “improve” resources to the “critical few” opportunities

• Allocating resources across the mill – constrained finishing room gets more help than unconstrained paper machine

Overall Continuous Improvement Process Champion (about 45% of time)

• Drive the Plan, Do, Check, Adjust (PDCA) cycle with a special focus on sustainability

• Ask lots of questions about “check” and “adjust” activities

• Hold hands when necessary

• Ensure all improvement activities support long term sustained results

• Champion the value-stream process for the department

• Ensure accurate current and future state maps for major products

• Drive completion on Value Stream Improvement Plans (VSIPs)

• Work with quality department to ensure quality issues are resolved

• Bring voice of the customer to the table, both internal and external

• Lead the Strategy Deployment process with the department lead team

• Ensure an organized, well defined system to select, prioritize and execute projects across the department that are aligned with the mill’s goals is consistently leveraged

• Make sure the department’s plan is aligned with the overall enterprise goals

• Make sure we are working on the right opportunities

• Make sure everyone understands the plan

• Head cheerleader / evangelist

• Ensure the entire organization sees “continuous improvement” as part of their job – including the “execute” folks like maintenance, hourly operators and FLLs

• Organize and oversee non-capital project selection and development process

• Participate in the capital allocation process

• Cost reduction capital project selection

• Ensure “improve” capital project benefits are realized

• Optimizing system after startup

• Ensure non capital avenues are explored before capital project is considered

• Communicate ME and Continuous Improvement (CI) efforts internally and externally via A3 and provide the “continuous improvement” section of the mill monthly report that summarizes activities with an emphasis on sustainable systems employed to address opportunities

• Ensure audits of the ME/CI work systems are conducted to ensure their effectiveness

• Make sure processes and systems are as consistent as practical across the different departments in the facility

• Single Point of Contact for ME and Continuous Improvement Efforts

• Mill Change Agent for ME and Continuous Improvement

• Tracking “improve” progress, getting involved in gaps between should and is

• Tracking progress — track CI progress in a way unique from how the mill has historically tracked results otherwise — find a good measure of sustainability and track and communicate progress

• Ensure improvement activities are focused both on manufacturing and non-manufacturing areas

• Advocate for sustainable improvement practices

• Ensuring lead team consistently executes continuous improvement the right way

• Solution seeker – understands mill problems / opportunities, searches out the right answers

Tool Utilization / Execution (about 10% of time)

• Be the ME blackbelt

• ME & CI Tool Master (Lean, Six Sigma, KT, OME, Energy Audit, etc.)

• Ensure rapid burst improvements are documented and sustained

Best Practice Replication (about 15% of time)

• Sharing best practices within the mill

• Best practice gatherer – attends regular training and meetings with other MMEs

• Champion the effective use of the Best Practices Forum for the facility

• Owns the replication process — Identify our practices that should be replicated elsewhere and look for processes that should be replicated here – this is the person that makes sure we are not re-inventing the wheel — the polar opposite of resisting change — this is the person who gets the organization to embrace change!

Capability (about 20% of time)

• CI mentoring champion

• Mentoring a successor (The level of training needed for the position will require a long mentoring process)

• Ensure operating employees are getting the CI mentoring and using tools

• Ensure there are the right number of “improve” resources (belted) and they are demonstrating their capability

• Not the mill super-trainer

• Identify mentoring needs and matching with external opportunities

• Mentor trained folks on the use of their tools

• Know enough to know what they don’t know

• Guiding and mentoring “improve” (belted) resources throughout the year

• Marshalling internal and external “improve” resources

• Measure and maintain minimum competency level for continuous improvement

• Ask the right questions to identify capability gaps within the mill, know when to go outside for help

• Coordinate all outside resources (Technology, suppliers, etc)

Qualifications:

• Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering or related field required.

• 5 or more years engineering experience in Utilities, preferably in a manufacturing continual improvement environment.

• 5 years of management and/or leadership experience in Utilities area.

• Qualified candidates have strong leadership skills focused on accountability and results, and have strong organization and planning skills. Highly effective communication and interpersonal skills are required.

Career Architect Competency Profile for MME role

These are the CA competencies most critical to succeed in this role. Each competency is followed by a specific example of how that skill applies to the daily activities of the ME Area Leader.

• Soft Skills

• Managerial Courage – Pushes back against the lead team when the decision is made to delay a grade change time reduction kaizen event on the paper machine in favor of short term results (making this month’s numbers look good).

• Perspective – Draws people out of the weeds, helps people see the big picture when the day to day struggles obscure the long term path.

• Motivating others – Empowers a process engineer to tackle a bark boiler optimization project.

• Customer Focus – Help the pulp mill listen to the paper mill and facilitate common projects to improve pulp quality.

• Learning on the Fly – Forced to learn enough details about an issue in the sheet plant to understand a specific problem and identify resource needs to resolve.

• Organizational Agility – Facilitates a project across diverse departments, knows who to talk to and how.

• Interpersonal Savvy – Has open and honest conversations about how a process is run verses how it should be run. Is able to get people to trust and open up.

• Hard Skills

• Building Effective Teams – Assemble a process improvement team to address lime kiln availability.

• Process Management – Puts the pieces of the puzzle together to get a big project done with what seems to be too limited resources.

• Organizing – Maintains up to the date information and status on multiple projects across the facility.

• Planning – Lays out the coming year’s projects with resources in a realistic achievable way.

• Managing and Measuring – Facilitates goal writing process for the mill using strategy deployment to develop clear measurable objectives.

• Presentation Skills – Presents the mills A3 plan to a team during a crew meeting.

• Conflict Management – Addresses strong resistance to continuous improvement principles in an effective, constructive manner.

International Paper is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Rome GA 30165

Location:

Rome, GA, US, 30165

Category: Manufacturing

Date: Aug 23, 2022