Production & Maintenance Manager Battery Anode Materials

About Umicore
Powering the cars of today and tomorrow. Reducing harmful emissions. Giving unique properties to high-end applications. Giving new life to used metals. As a global advanced materials and recycling group, we develop, produce, and recycle materials for a better life.
About Corporate Research & Development
Driving progress through research. Providing material solutions for the world’s most pressing challenges and anticipating the needs of our customers requires a high level of investment in research. Umicore’s Group Research capabilities focus on new materials and processes to address the megatrends of resource scarcity and clean mobility. The nature of research and development means that we cannot stand still. We need to find new ways to do things, discover new solutions and develop new ideas.

Which is where you come in.

As Production and Maintenance Manager you are responsible for daily operations of the Olen industrial pilot line for producing anode battery materials. The teams that report to you are the production team, the maintenance team and the Process Managers team. The installation is fully automated and will be operated in shifts system. You will be responsible to supply the quantity ordered by OEM and battery customers according to the quality, safety, environment and health requirements.

The Olen industrial pilot line functions as the “blue print” concept towards qualification for future customer battery projects. As such it will be the justification for future mass production sites that are launched to execute our business operational plan. For managing the goals of the BOP, the pilot line is undergoing a large transformation towards “higher capacity, more efficient, quality focussed” industrial pilot line as from 2025 and needs to start up in 2026 under standard operating procedure.

The function will be located in Olen (BE) and will report to the Director Operations of the Anode Battery Materials.

• Start up, coordinate and manage production process, production team and supporting electrical & automate maintenance team, OPEX BOM team and process manager team to make the product within budget requirements (volume & cost price) by learning, managing and further improving the implemented production systems.
• International and strategical focus to support mass production site “blue print concept”. This also includes high stakes strategical key projects for the business of EMM (i.e. BOM cost reduction (raw materials, key consumables, MES)).
• Organize maintenance (mech, E&I&A, MOC) tasks in ERP system and follow up on the correct execution of the executing teams and adherence to legal requirements. Follow up on applicable SLA’s with stakeholders (i.e. Umicore)
• Manage and safeguard operational quality related expectations and challenges of the production process, maintenance team, continuous improvement concept to adhere to client expectations (MES, process variation and capacity debottlenecking). These are high demands, international context related to applicable QMS systems (frequent customer audits, qualification gates, ISO  and IATF 16949 (APQP))
• Guarantee respecting of Environment, Health and Safety legal requirements
• Give input and make proposals for new investments. Launch investment requests. Follow up and optimization of new investment projects. Keep up-to-date with product and process developments, technologies and applications in close cooperation with the other members of the Anode EMM team
• Promotes on a daily basis a good social climate and is responsible for people, training & development

• You obtained a Master degree in chemical or metallurgical engineering, or PhD in chemistry
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in a production environment as leader of a team (leading / motivation of co-workers, cooperation with colleagues, convincing management and directors) + experience of the organization and the internal functioning of a plant or a small company
• Broad general technical knowledge on industrial installations and processes
• Familiar with practical requirements of environmental, health and safety issues.
• A good knowledge of working with…