VAM Threading Competence Center – Process Engineer

Vallourec North America•Houston, TX

About The Position

At Vallourec, we are seeking individuals whose passion and dedication match the strength and resilience of the steel we produce. The VAM ® Threading Competence Center (VAM ® TCC) was created 15 years ago. Its primary mission is to give the Industrial support to the Group in order to expand our footprint and capacity for OCTG Premium Threading. Acting as a center of expertise, VAM® TCC drives performance across manufacturing plants by benchmarking processes, monitoring KPIs, and ensuring the deployment of best practices. The team combines deep technical knowledge with training initiatives to develop new experts and foster continuous improvement in safety, quality, and cost efficiency. Each focal point within the TCC plays a critical role in supporting industrialization, troubleshooting, equipment development, and knowledge sharing across Vallourec’s worldwide threading community. Your Role at a Glance To work on the continuous improvement of the assigned OCTG processes. Looking at Safety, Quality and cost savings improvement.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial or Mechanical Engineering
Open and continuous improvement mind: to keep developing him/herself and our manufacturing processes.
Good communication skills (report, email, phone, face to face,…)
Autonomy and accountability
Capable to follow up tasks in time constrains.
Capable to communicate any issue early on
Comfortable in working with manufacturing team like methods, quality, production, maintenance…
Comfortable following Manufacturing Quality procedures
Capable to manage, work with and follow up suppliers.
Open to develop innovative solutions and research new manufacturing technologies.
Able to prepare products and processes reports by collecting, analyzing, and summarizing information and trends with support of an expert.
Able to provide suggestions during incident investigations and to advise corrective actions.
Open to exchange knowledge with other specialist
Ready to challenge existing processes and practices for continuous improvement.
Experience in industry operations: methods, maintenance or production departments. At least 3 years.
Strong analytical skills. Able to elaborate hypothesis to be validated; to build tests plans; to summarize results and conclusions.
Good knowledge about threading, metal machining or metallurgy.
Good understanding of OTCG products design and key features.

Nice To Haves

At min. 5 years in a Engineering dept in an OCTG mass production Plant
Good understanding of VAM® connections design and gauging procedures/methods
Experience in a Quality department
Green belt certification
Travel: approximately one intercontinental trips (up to 2 weeks each) per year, some domestic

Responsibilities

Define and drive inspection processes ambitions (short, mid and long term): Thread dimensional inspection: assess current technologies and solutions. Lead solution qualification and prepare future deployments. Profile inspection: support ongoing projects. Assess additional existing solutions (test, qualification) and prepare future deployments. Final visual inspection: support ongoing projects
Digital logsheet (DLS): define/review mid- and long-term road map. Write functional specifications with the project team. Communicate about new features to the DLS users. Lead troubleshooting and support to the users. Develop training material for the DLS
Capability studies: support plants on threading and gauging capability studies. Benchmark existing gauging practices (means, frequencies) to identify room for opportunities. Review and validate capability studies with One R&D and VAM® Services
Locking position control: support future solutions for high torque products locking position control: participate to working group, lead test and industrialization, support deployment in the plants…
Find/Benchmark Technologies: Regarding the challenge of manufacturing products, this position can be challenged to find technologies capable to solve certain quality, process or safety issues in process.
Prototype Develop: In the case the process needs to develop a prototype for new technology or evolution of process standards it is valid to test new equipment under the perimeter of a prototype, this will be linked with a pilot plant, tested and validated for future deployment. (Equipment to adapt current equipment)
Training Team and Material Development : To collaborate with E learning team of VAM® TCC in order to build modules for training purposes but also develop a stress relief network and school inside VALLOUREC per region.
Build CAPEX Plan: Based on return of experiences from existing machines or from prototyping and development of new equipment, this position will be involved in anticipating future capex. He will have to assist and prepare CAPEX project model (Incl. Equipment investment, layout footprint…) in order to prepare stress-relief activities in Vallourec plants and accessories shops.
OPEX estimation: Capable to foresee how new processes, new technologies, new VAM® Products industrialization can impact of such in the operational cost of Vallourec Plants.
Deployment: capable to define and support the industrial strategy in a Threading line for new product industrialization and for VAM® product development in One R&D. This will include the suppliers strategy management and the support to Vallourec Threading lines (support to plant production, troubleshooting and preventive maintenance rules definition)
To animate the threading community: sharing update on process, facilitating exchanges between the plants, participating to benchmark activities.
To be the referent about any question related to his/her processes, including being part of Group Quality and Safety documentation workgroups (e.g. TSLI revision)
To identify today experts and potential future experts. To propose a plan to build and to maintain expertise in the community.
This role serves as focal point and is in charge of: Identifying existing best practices for processes; Monitoring the deployment and adoption of best practices in the plants; Supporting the plants for industrialization, troubleshooting, new equipment development and start up; Performing technical benchmark inside and outside Vallourec plants for new practices and new technologies; Targeting the improvement of Safety and Quality, as well as the reduction of the manufacturing costs; Communicating with the entire worldwide threading community to share updates on process.