Senior Automation & Controls Engineer

Springs Window Fashions•Middleton, WI

3d•$90,000 - $110,000

About The Position

Springs Window Fashions is a leader in the custom window treatment industry since 1939. Headquartered in Middleton WI, we have 6,000 associates with locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Our custom window treatments are available under the Bali, Graber, SunSetter and Mecho brands in nearly every major retailer, in thousands of designer showrooms, and showcased in large commercial buildings. Our company has made significant investments to become a leader in product innovation. As North America’s premier window covering company, we’re committed to creating a “Best Experience” for our consumers, channel partners and associates. We are bringing new innovations to the market at an accelerated pace and have a variety of offerings to consumers who want to improve their home décor. Purpose: Develop, implement & expand in-house capabilities for machine control and process automation/digitalization. Aligning with business strategies; improving customer experience related to quality performance & delivery, factory efficiency and enterprise Value Creation using Smart Technology.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering; Mechatronics may be considered
5+ years as an active lead machine designer; team members may be considered with more experience
Familiarity with A3 9-step problem-solving or some other formal problem-solving methodology/toolkit
CSIA (or progress towards); Inductive Ignition Gold Certification (or progress)
Application Development
PLC
PowerAutomate and other workflow-management platforms to create tools that others will use to make their lives simpler
Inductive Ignition (Edge and Perspective, facility with Python is expected)
MS SQL Server database (the database is professionally managed by others)
Machine Building
Motors, actuators
Vision (2D)
Cross-funtional team participation
Ability to make presentations, propose solutions, ask for ideas to/from a cross-functional and a wide spectrum of personalities and formal levels of experience. Tolerance, patience and persuasiveness are a must.

Nice To Haves

Near-term: classic standalone tools to perform tedious/repeatable/awkward tasks currently performed by associates
Future: Cobots to truly facilitate/enhance associates’ capabilities

Responsibilities

Interview internal customers at Manufacturing locations to gain insights on top opportunities to bring digital and automation solutions as value creation.
Develop solutions specifications, supporting business cases and alternatives to improve operational efficiencies.
Standardize and scale proven smart technology solutions across network.
Working with vendor-partners, creating new smart technology systems that are transformational competitive advantage.
Ensure artifacts are provided, stored, searchable that will allow support/maintenance by others
Develop schematics, cabinet layout, PLC programs, SCADA interfaces, acceptance test criteria (create the RFQ and review the vendor RFPs)
Work with vendors to create systems (BOTH factory acceptance, on-site acceptance are expected)
Identify opportunities to bring portions of system development in-house
SCADA integration with local and corporate systems
Compliance with industry-standard practices (electrical power distribution, human interaction/safety), work closely with corporate and site Maintenance, Engineering, ESH leaders.
Working with local associate’s in Maintenance, ESH, Engineering departments to commission and transfer responsibility for operating and maintaining the system to the local team where possible
Be on the lookout for non-lean behavior (clipboards, white-boards, etc. that contain information that others will eventually transmit manually to other systems for historical display and storage)
Bring ideas to the team, participate in solution design, problem-solving, etc.
Create software tools in the SCADA layer to facilitate data collection, rapid problem-detection and problem-resolution