Manufacturing Engineer

Thermal Corporation | Rankin Facility | Custom Air Handlers | Houston, Texas

Thermal Corporation, a Nailor Industries brand, designs and manufactures air handling equipment for commercial and industrial applications. The Rankin facility specializes in highly customized air handlers built to meet project-specific customer requirements. Nailor Industries operates multiple manufacturing facilities in the Houston area and employs more than 700 operations employees.

The Manufacturing Engineer will lead hands‑on improvements across fabrication, welding, sheet metal processing, subassembly, final assembly, and shipping. The role has two connected priorities: improve individual manufacturing processes for safety, quality, repeatability, labor efficiency, and throughput; and create a reliable flow of fabricated material to assembly. The engineer will also establish a one‑piece‑flow assembly process that moves each air handler from start to finish with minimal waiting, interruption, and work‑in‑process.

This engineer will map the current state, identify constraints and root causes, design the future state, coordinate implementation, and validate results using measurable operating data. Success requires regular presence on the production floor and close partnership with Production, Planning, Materials, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, and Purchasing.

• Evaluate and improve structural steel and sheet metal manufacturing processes, including saw and plasma cutting, drilling, welding and fixturing, laser, turret and shear cutting, brake‑press forming, and insulated panel production.
• Map current‑state production and material flow from raw material through fabrication, subassembly, final assembly, and shipping; identify bottlenecks, shortages, delays, excess work‑in‑process, and non‑value‑added movement.
• Design and implement a future‑state flow that delivers the correct fabricated components to assembly in the required sequence and at the required time.
• Develop a one‑piece‑flow assembly system, including station layouts, work sequence, labor and equipment requirements, line balancing, material presentation, and standard work.
• Improve fabrication prioritization and daily execution so capacity is focused on parts needed for current assembly demand.
• Establish practical pull signals, staging, kitting, visual controls, and part‑tracking methods that reduce missing or unprocessed parts and minimize emergency rework and expedite activity.
• Use time studies, cycle‑time analysis, takt‑time calculations, capacity modeling, value‑stream mapping, and bottleneck analysis to develop and validate improvements.
• Reduce unit idle time, priority switching, assembly interruptions, and overall production lead time so completed units move off the constrained assembly floor as quickly as possible.
• Develop and maintain plant, equipment, workstation, and material‑flow layouts using AutoCAD.
• Develop improved methods, tooling, fixtures, process parameters, carts, point‑of use storage, and other production aids that reduce setup time, variation, defects, rework, ergonomic risk, and labor content.
• Create and sustain standard work, work instructions, training materials, and visual management for new or improved processes.
• Own improvement projects from problem definition and data collection through future‑state design, implementation, employee training, performance validation, and project closeout.
• Partner cross‑functionally to identify material and engineering readiness constraints before work reaches the assembly floor and support practical mitigation plans.
• Support capital equipment evaluations and implementations, process changes, and production ramp‑up activities while maintaining company safety and quality standards.

• Assembly consistently receives complete and accurate sets of fabricated parts when they are needed.
• Missing or unprocessed parts, emergency fabrication runs, and schedule disruptions are materially reduced.
• Air handlers move through assembly in a defined sequence with less waiting, priority switching, and incomplete work.
• Work‑in‑process and unit dwell time…