Glass Melting Engineering Lead

Owens Corning•Kansas City, KS

9d•$92,000 - $119,000•Remote

About The Position

As a glass manufacturer, the heart of our manufacturing process is melting. In melting, we focus on techniques and technologies to provide process stability, energy efficiency and asset maintenance. A successful Glass Melting Engineer will leverage know-how in melting systems, operating procedures, and furnace design concepts to maintain and improve our existing operations, which includes new technology evaluation and deployment. This requires close interaction with plant batch & furnace engineers, technical leaders, furnace design engineers and raw material/glass scientists.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Glass Science, Materials Science or Ceramic/Chemical Engineering is required.
At least 2 to 3 years of manufacturing experience within glass melting operations.
Willingness to travel up to 60% supporting operations at North American locations.
Fundamental understanding of batch, glass melting and glass delivery processes.
Experience in high temperature refractory materials used in glass furnace designs.
Experience working with multiple plants and melter systems in a support role.

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree is preferred.
Familiarity with glass melting operations, melter hot repair, gas-oxy and gas-air combustion, electric melting, electrical boosting, batch house operations, glass & glass raw materials is desired.

Responsibilities

Demonstrates a Commitment to Safety and Provides Technical and Operational Guidance for Safety: Ensures rigorous compliance to standard safety procedures and Owens Corning corporate policies. Authors SOPs and JHAs for new method development and implementation. Utilize technical knowledge to provide safe glass melting operations. Participates in monthly safety meetings and on-site safety audits. Completes all required safety training.
Provides Division Level Technical Leadership for Glass Melting Operations: Operations activities will involve leading or supporting batch house operations, furnace heat-ups, glass drain and shutdown projects, new material trials, new sensor development, and audits of batch house and glass melting manufacturing processes. Review and interpret data from multiple sources and systems in batch operations, melting systems and standard practices to provide technical guidance to OC leadership, plant leaders, and plant batch and melting engineers with focus to improve operations performance in terms of safety, productivity, throughput, energy use and asset life. Facilitate preliminary safety, risk and failure analysis for new technology, batch house operations, furnace refractory trials, design and or operating changes in technology or controls. Provide scope of work and required planning and oversight for major refractory repairs including crown and general refractory repairs, water jackets, electrode pushes, and zone re-cabling, drains and heat ups. Lead startup team and be part of Vertical startup for new, rebuilt or repaired furnaces and associated infrastructure including melter and front-end systems: Develop heat up plans and personnel and contractor requirements. Conduct pre-light checklist reviews for build and commissioning. Make furnace light off readiness recommendation. Manage heat up activities including heat up rate and expansion. Coordinate glass delivery to forming operations and tune front end settings. Establish baseline conditions for plant operation for critical process parameters. Leads effort to improve melting capabilities and asset life with cost justified capital investments. Searches for new technologies, sensors and solutions for glass plants and helps drive corporate direction for digital change providing new monitoring and faster facilitation of new control & reaction standards. Partners with digital strategy team to provide requirements for the development and improvement of process analysis tools and automated controls. Looks for ways to reduce touch points, eliminate waste, and streamline reaction time to control. Provides elevated monitoring, training, and support for plants with less experienced workforce. Identifies opportunities for process optimization, stability and lowering manufacturing costs.