Process Engineer; Tempo

Founded in 2013, Home Chef is the leading meal solutions company with both a retail and online presence. Available online athomechef.comand in retail at more than 2,100 Kroger grocery stores, Home Chef is committed to inspiring and enabling more people to cook simple, delicious meals, no matter how busy they are.

In 2023, Home Chef introduced a new brand, Tempo! Tempo features a rotating selection of ready-to-heat meals delivered directly to your door. These meals are better-for-you versions of familiar favorites, designed to save you time and reduce stress while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Our Tempo menu includes options that are protein-packed, fiber-rich, calorie and carb conscious, keto-friendly, and dietitian-approved.

Similar to our recipes, we recognize that variety is the spice of life, and therefore, our employees also bring their uniqueness and color to our fantastic team. We’re eager to work with humble team players and pragmatic next-level thinkers to innovate on Home Chef’s offerings.

The Home Chef Ready to Heat (RTH) Process Engineer ensures site readiness for RTH product expansions and drives continuous improvement across labor, process, and productivity within RTH operations. This role partners closely with the Tempo Operations team and cross-functional peers — both at the corporate level and at the plant level — to support the expansion of the Tempo brand and complete ad hoc assignments for the Sr.

Manager of Continuous Improvement and the broader Tempo CI team as a whole.

Detailed Responsibilities

Coordination and execution of site openings and RTH product expansions, working with RTH site leadership for planning and preparedness

• Aid plant and corporate teams in scoping out new initiatives to support rolling out new product lines, increasing capacity and complexity, and improving metric performance while providing plant teams with the ownership to implement those initiatives and providing appropriate support as needed.
• Build and maintain roadmap for new RTH initiatives being rolled out to the site from corporate business partners
• Assist plant leaders and corporate stakeholders in following a stage gate process for new product launches to ensure proper change management
• Advocate for plant teams to corporate partners

Partners cross-functionally to identify and drive improvements across RTH labor, process, and people-related gaps

• Aid in analyzing labor, process, and people-related data across sites to identify root causes of gaps and opportunities for improvement, partnering with the Tempo Operations team to implement solutions
• Assist in tracking, analyzing, and reporting on process and OEE performance to support root cause problem-solving and drive operational improvements across sites
• Identify gaps that require larger-scale solutions and project manage the initiative end-to-end in partnership with relevant teams as needed

Develop RTH network SOPs for uniformity across RTH processes

• Ensure standard operating procedures exist for all critical RTH tasks and align processes across all fulfillment sites
• Act as a liaison between fulfillment centers to ensure that the best of Home Chef’s knowledge/processes are communicated between facilities and work to oversee initiatives to streamline across facilities where appropriate
• Using performance metrics, evaluate the success of Ready to Heat processes and develop and implement continuous improvement initiatives

This position requires at least 50% travel.

Qualifications

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability needed for this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities.

• Completion of a four-year degree program in Engineering, Operations Management, Supply Chain, or a related field. 1–3 years of experience in operations or continuous improvement is strongly preferred.
• Experience in food manufacturing is preferred. Strong candidates would have experience in supply chain, plant operations, or operations excellence roles
• Exceptional communication with demonstrated ability to drive results, manage conflict, achieve alignment, and collaboration amongst cross functional…