What are the responsibilities and job description for the Continuous Improvement Engineer position at James Hardie?
James Hardie Building Products Inc. is the North American leader in fiber cement home siding and exterior design solutions. Hardie® products offer long lasting beauty and endless design possibilities with trusted protection and low maintenance. The company pioneered modern fiber cement building products and continues to invest in innovation to transform the industry. James Hardie is a high-performance organization, with an unwavering commitment to Zero Harm. The company proudly employs a diverse workforce of over 3,000 employees across operations in North America.
Make your dream career a reality. It’s possible!
Onsite from the Prattville, AL plant
This position supports the Prattville, Alabama Plant in meeting the product specification, customer requirements, and shareholder expectations by improving process capability and driving process improvement projects utilizing Lean/Six Sigma methods. Their work efforts will improve attainment of key manufacturing metrics: safety, quality, yield, throughput, and cost efficiency. This person must have extensive working knowledge with continuous water and slurry fluid handling systems, raw material storage and processing, sheeted or heavy industrial processing (i.e., paper, steel, gypsum), and coating operations.
To be effective in this role, the person should have 3 years of experience working in a large-scale continuous manufacturing site conducting cycle time and bottleneck analysis, waste mapping, process optimization, and new product trials resulting in improved throughput, quality, or yield.
What You’ll Do:
What You’ll Bring:
At James Hardie, we recognize that our success depends on our people. We've worked hard to build a generous and competitive benefits program that demonstrates our commitment to our employees.
James Hardie Building Products Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, genetic information, veteran's status, marital status, pregnancy, disability, or any other basis protected by law.
Make your dream career a reality. It’s possible!
Onsite from the Prattville, AL plant
This position supports the Prattville, Alabama Plant in meeting the product specification, customer requirements, and shareholder expectations by improving process capability and driving process improvement projects utilizing Lean/Six Sigma methods. Their work efforts will improve attainment of key manufacturing metrics: safety, quality, yield, throughput, and cost efficiency. This person must have extensive working knowledge with continuous water and slurry fluid handling systems, raw material storage and processing, sheeted or heavy industrial processing (i.e., paper, steel, gypsum), and coating operations.
To be effective in this role, the person should have 3 years of experience working in a large-scale continuous manufacturing site conducting cycle time and bottleneck analysis, waste mapping, process optimization, and new product trials resulting in improved throughput, quality, or yield.
What You’ll Do:
- Process Improvement Projects
- Partner with plant CIMS network in quality, efficiency, and RTY improvement projects
- Identify performance gaps in yield, uptime, speed, and quality, and drive projects to close these gaps.
- Benchmark existing processes against best-in-class systems, both internal and external to the business
- Improve process capability through better operational processes, instrumentation, automation, and error-proofing techniques.
- Track progress on key process measurements and communicate to stakeholders
- Capital Projects
- Manage small and medium scale Capital projects that enable process improvement work streams
- Perform project financial analysis and justification
- Deliver all technical tasks to comply with quality, safety, and project management best practices
- Execute projects on time, within scope and budget
- Provide engineering support including design and constructability reviews and commissioning assistance on large scale Capital Projects
- Plant Process Audit Program
- Partner with plant Quality Manager, plant Engineers, and operators in plant process audits
- Support plants in improvement projects identified through the audit process
- Support process audits as triggered by quality incident investigations
What You’ll Bring:
- Demonstrated ability to build credibility quickly at all levels within manufacturing
- Excellent decision making and problem-solving skills; the ability to make sound judgements
- Demonstrated ability to apply structured thinking and analysis to complex and ambiguous problems
- Ability to manage time and work autonomously, remain organised to achieve goals within the desired timeframes
- Ability to effectively drive change in the workplace.
- Ability to build relationships with internal and external stakeholders
- A strong capability for gap analysis, planning, and priority setting
- High attention to detail
- Tech savvy and curious, with high learning agility and flexibility of style
- Knowledge in Process Engineering with skills on
- Writing Process and functional descriptions with Process control logics
- Design and Draw up P&IDs
- Mass and Energy Balances
- Process Simulations and calculations with equipment sizing
- Pump and Pipe pressure drop calculations and sizing
- Dynamic simulations
- Knowledge in continuous improvement projects
- Knowledge in project management and execution
- Knowledge in process commissioning
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Chemical, Process, Mechatronics, or Mechanical preferred). Degree must be from an accredited institution.
- 3 years of experience Continuous Improvement Engineer, Process Engineer, Mechatronics Engineer
- Experience working in a continuous manufacturing environment; thorough understanding of manufacturing processes and procedures
- Experience in raw materials and raw material processing
- Experience in design or deployment of process automation to support improvements in efficiency and effectiveness is desirable
- Experience in laboratory and in process testing
- Involvement in change initiatives and projects
- Experience in 6 Sigma/Lean continuous improvement environment using key tools and frameworks and successfully rolling them out across manufacturing environments
At James Hardie, we recognize that our success depends on our people. We've worked hard to build a generous and competitive benefits program that demonstrates our commitment to our employees.
- Comprehensive low-cost co-pay Health Insurance; medical, dental, prescription, and vision insurance benefits for every 30 hour full-time employee. Insurance starts on day one!
- 401(k) Retirement plan that will match 100% of employees saved dollars up to the first 6% of your salary
- Paid holidays, paid vacation including Jury Duty and bereavement leave
- Wellness Program
- Employee Assistance Program
- Parental Leave
- Community Involvement & Sustainable Solutions - Fire Resistant Siding to Help Rebuild the Grizzly Flats Community | James Hardie
- And more - JH Benefits At A Glance 2025
James Hardie Building Products Inc. is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, genetic information, veteran's status, marital status, pregnancy, disability, or any other basis protected by law.
