NA Facility Excellence Engineer

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NA Facility Excellence Engineer (PG 13)

1. Purpose of the Role

The North America Facility Excellence Engineer is responsible for optimizing the layout, flow, and resource utilization of production facility floorspace. The focus facilities include: 1) Eastover Mill, 2) Sumter Sheet Plant, 3) Ticonderoga Mill, and 4) warehouse facilities in near proximity to the production locations. The primary physical location and focus of the role will be the Eastover/Sumter complex, with travel to Ticonderoga as appropriate given needs of the business and travel budget.

The Facility Excellence Engineer (warehouse operations) works in close partnership with the Product Flow Manager (shipping and transportation) under the direction of the Business Logistics Manager as part of the core leadership team responsible for mill-to-customer product flow execution. While each position maintains distinct functional responsibilities, both roles share accountability for achieving shipping, inventory, customer service, and operational excellence objectives. The expectation is that these leaders operate as a cohesive unit, leveraging their complementary expertise, jointly prioritizing resources and initiatives, and developing aligned solutions to support mill performance and business results.

2. Key Accountabilities

For the Eastover Mill, Sumter Sheet Plant, Ticonderoga Mill, and associated warehouse operations:

• Systematically and proactively address safety systems and risks relative to warehouse operations.
• Optimize facility product placement and flow; optimize within the capabilities and needs of regional product flow. Continuously improve intra-facility material flow processes and resource planning.
• Continuously evaluate current state shipping and product flow, evaluate future needs, and highlight opportunity areas that require decisions by key stakeholders.
• Ensure correct floor layout plans given supply, demand, and capacity constraints.
• Enable On Time in Full order fulfillment at the lowest possible cost.
• Collaborate closely with Supply Planning, Replenishment Planning, Transportation Planning, Customer Service, and Sales and Operations Planning on improvement initiatives.
• Support process integration for warehouse and shipping processes between current and future MES and Enterprise Order Management and planning systems.
• Optimize the Sylvamo South Carolina product flow infrastructure and plan through all future operational phases.
• Provide leadership in warehouse operations practices that optimize order fulfillment and mitigate risk of product damage.
• Organize warehouses and establish operational guidelines for the full range of operating conditions.
• Optimize processes contributing to inventory accuracy and material handling efficiency.
• Engage in the construction and implementation of future capacity expansions to ensure that layout is optimized and sustained. Ensure that information systems infrastructure is correct.
• Apply continuous and deliberate improvement methodologies to the product flow optimization program.
• Facilitate team problem solving and skill development needed to support facility optimization.
• Track leading practices between Sylvamo facilities.
• Provide practical “learn by doing” opportunities for facility team members.
• Proactively identify opportunity areas using leading indicators.
• Drive to understand true root causes when addressing problem areas.
• Provide high impact, positive visible leadership to key stakeholders.
• Provide coaching, constructive feedback, and development for direct reports.
• Participate in valuable project teams and provide thought leadership in:
• Deliberate Improvement
• Digital Transformation Systems
• Safety Performance and Risk Mitigation
• Critical tactical activities including inventory accuracy/cycle counting, weekend duty/on-call responsibilities, urgent production and shipping issue root cause analysis and resolution
• Non-conforming product pipeline management and stakeholder communications
• Financial and performance metric tradeoff management
• Facilitate automation and simplification by collaborating with resources to continuously identify processes that can be simplified and automated.
• Identify opportunities for development of data visualization and data science capabilities.
• Find practical solutions to reporting and processing of data to free team members from manual data entry and processing time.
• Apply leading practices in facility layout, storage bay locations, and material handling processes.
• Engage with Sylvamo Digital Transformation resources to apply leading technologies, systems, and processes to improve converting and warehouse operations.

3. Key Challenges

• Balancing facility layout, storage capacity, inventory requirements, and operational efficiency across multiple facilities.
• Supporting future operational phases and capacity expansions while maintaining current business performance.
• Optimizing product flow infrastructure while managing supply, demand, and capacity constraints.
• Influencing cross-functional stakeholders across manufacturing, supply chain, customer service, IT, finance, and warehouse operations.
• Identifying and implementing automation and simplification opportunities in complex operational environments.
• Ensuring inventory accuracy, material handling efficiency, and order fulfillment performance while mitigating safety and operational risks.
• Managing urgent production, shipping, inventory, and non-conforming product issues while maintaining focus on continuous improvement objectives.

4. Scope

• Primary responsibility for facility excellence initiatives at the Eastover Mill with support responsibilities for the Sumter Sheet Plant, Ticonderoga Mill, and nearby warehouse facilities.
• Cross-functional influence across:
• Finance
• IT
• Manufacturing/Production
• Sourcing
• Supply Chain
• Customer Service
• Overflow Warehouse Infrastructure
• Influence areas’ processes
• Leads facility layout optimization, product flow design, warehouse operations improvement, inventory accuracy initiatives, and material handling efficiency improvements.
• Participates in critical operational support activities including inventory accuracy, cycle counting, urgent production and shipping issue resolution, and non-conforming product pipeline management.
• Frequent travel to local converting plant (Sumter) and local warehouses (DSV, Hodge).
• Possible occasional travel to Ticonderoga, NY and Sylvamo headquarters in Memphis, TN.

5. Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Deep understanding of safety risk mitigation systems and processes applicable to a manufacturing environment.
• 5+ years direct experience, in-depth understanding and problem-solving skills in mill shipping processes for inbound and outbound materials, including truck and rail traffic control.
• Deliberate Improvement formal training preferred (Yellow or Green belt)
• Formal education and/or certification in Supply Chain Management preferred.
• Advanced analytical skills and ability to synthesize large data sets.
• Data visualization (Power BI) experience or aptitude to rapidly learn and apply preferred.
• Industrial Engineering training and/or equivalent proven skills.
• Strong interpersonal, facilitation, and team-building skills.
• Excellent computer skills including Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) and SharePoint.
• Exceptional organizational and customer service skills.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.

6. Competencies

• Safe and Well
• Courageous
• Trustworthy
• Inclusive and Collaborative
• Team-Oriented
• Agile
• Business Savvy
• Customer Focused
• Financially Savvy
• Operationally Excellent

Sylvamo partners with you and your family on your health and wellness journey. We offer a premium suite of health and wellness programs for you and your family, including medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, and a generous 401(k) plan with matching company contributions, and more. Sylvamo is here for all stages of life. We also offer paid time off and paid holidays per year.

The salary, other compensation, and benefits information is accurate as of the date of this posting. The Company reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law.

Sylvamo 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.