Lead Production Engineer

Location: Southmoor

The Opportunity

This is an exciting time to join an established and internationally respected medical device company with a long history of developing and producing highly regarded medical equipment.

Now part of a larger international medical technology group, the business is entering an important period of investment, new product introduction and production development.

Alongside the continued production and evolution of the products for which the company is renowned, the business is preparing for the introduction of next-generation and entirely new products, creating significant opportunities to develop the production operation in Abingdon.

As Production Engineering Team Lead, you will be at the centre of this change.

This is not simply a role focused on maintaining today s production environment. We are looking for someone who can help define how tomorrow s products will be produced developing existing production processes, introducing new methods and technologies, establishing and improving production lines, and ensuring that new products move successfully from development into efficient, repeatable and high-quality production.

The successful individual will inherit an experienced Production Engineering team and an established production environment. The challenge will be to preserve what works well while identifying where things can be done differently and better
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We are therefore looking for a creatively minded and practically orientated engineering leader: someone who is comfortable challenging existing methods, evaluating new tools and technologies, and turning ideas into sustainable improvements in quality, productivity, cost, capacity and production performance
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Overall Purpose of the Role

To lead and develop the Production Engineering team, managing its workload, priorities and technical resources while providing effective engineering support across the wider production operation.

The Production Engineering Team Lead will work closely with Production, NPD, Quality & Regulatory, Purchasing/Sourcing and other functions to support existing products while playing a key role in the industrialisation and introduction of new products into the Abingdon production facility.

The position will combine hands-on engineering leadership with longer-term responsibility for improving production capability, processes and methods.

A central objective will be to ensure that Production Engineering is not simply responding to today s production problems, but is actively preparing the business for future products, increased production requirements and continued growth.

Key Responsibilities

Lead the day-to-day activities of the Production Engineering department and directly manage a team of five Production Engineers.

Establish clear priorities, objectives and workloads for the team, balancing immediate production requirements with longer-term engineering and improvement projects.

Work closely with the Production department to resolve day-to-day issues and minimise disruption to output.

Provide engineering leadership for the introduction of new products into production, working closely with NPD from the development stage through industrialisation, validation, production launch and subsequent volume production.

Support the creation, modification and optimisation of production lines for both new and existing products, considering quality, ergonomics, workflow, capacity, efficiency, cost and scalability.

Review existing production methods and identify opportunities to introduce new processes, tooling, equipment, automation and production technologies where these can improve quality, productivity or cost.

Champion a culture of continuous improvement, using appropriate Lean Manufacturing, problem-solving and process-improvement techniques to identify and eliminate waste and improve production performance.

Review and investigate rejected parts, assemblies and production failures, establishing root causes and implementing robust corrective actions.

Support production change control and associated software/system testing.

Develop and support cost-down and value-improvement initiatives across existing products and production processes without compromising product quality or regulatory compliance.

Develop and support test protocols and the validation of new or modified parts, assemblies, production equipment and processes.

Work closely with Purchasing and Sourcing on the evaluation and approval of new and revised components and samples.

Support the qualification and validation of new suppliers, processes and products, including visits to supplier facilities where appropriate.

Provide engineering support throughout the lifecycle of established products, including component obsolescence, supplier changes, quality variation, test issues and opportunities for functional or production improvement.

Work collaboratively with Quality & Regulatory on complaint investigations, root-cause analysis, CAPA activity and the implementation of sustainable corrective and…