Senior Process Manager

Context

Within the Process team of Refractory, Abrasives & Construction (RAC) Business Area Industrial Support, the perimeter covers all of the RAC industrial sites (about 40 plants in North America, Europe, Middle East, South Africa, India and China).

The job will be preferably based in ITC Lyon in Vaulx-Milieu, although it could be on another RAC site in Europe.

Frequent travels in France and worldwide will be required, for about 40% of the time.

Missions

Reporting to the Industrial Support Director of RAC (Refractory, Abrasives & Construction), the Senior Process Manager leads a team of 4 process managers who are experts in their respective fields, representing the main production processes and technologies which can be found within RAC’s industrial network.

He/she contributes to raise the level of safety at work, to improve the overall performance of industrial sites (quality mastery, capacity increases, optimization of energy consumption), to develop and share technical knowledge and good practices and to strengthen industrial mastery.

He/she regularly interacts with plant process engineers and with other departments within the Industrial Support (including continuous improvement, projects, energy), and with other Imerys teams (corporate process, projects, energy), with equipment suppliers and with external companies.

Main missions :

Safety

• Personally works with the highest level of safety.

• Contributes to improve safety within RAC sites, in particular during plant visits.

• Participates in process safety assessments during installation of new equipment.

Projects

• Actively supports the BA projects managers in production capacities designing/engineering.

• Participate in opportunity and feasibility studies for these projects.

• Contributes to equipment definition during detailed engineering and guarantees definition.

• Participates in start-up of new equipment, and leads optimization phase after commissioning.

Support to plants

• Provides in-depth technical assistance to solve complex process issues and to optimize equipment performance.

• Optimizes existing processes with state of the art technologies in order to optimize efficiency, productivity, quality, safety and profitability.

• Keeps regular contact with plant process engineers to follow industrial performance, monitor changes and proposes corrective actions when necessary

• Participates actively in the industrialisation of new products by bringing technical support and expertise.

• Upon request from the plants, performs technical assistance missions to optimize equipment.

• Performs technical audits in priority plants and maps main bottlenecks.

• Works with industrial sites and purchasing to widen the list of potential suppliers of critical parts and to optimize replacement costs.

Process experts team management

• Leads and animates process experts teams (feedback, objectives definition and appraisal…)

• Ensures sustainability of knowledge and team development

Process network - knowledge sharing

• Provides mentorship for on-site process teams.

• Implements and animates network between process / Opex engineers in plants, in order to bolster information sharing and good practices exchanges.

• Delivers technical training to new process engineers, or upon request from hubs and sites

• Ensures technology watch, keeps contacts with potential suppliers, organizes and shares knowledge.

• Establish contacts and exchanges with specialists of the same processes in other Imerys Business Areas.

Profile

• Relevant engineering or technical degree, for instance in process engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, geology and mining…

• Good theoretical and practical knowledge in pyroprocessing, knowledge in crushing, grinding, separation and classification processes or competencies in clay treatment (milling, extrusion…) would be a plus.

• Significant experience (at least 10 years and more) in a similar industrial environment in design / operations / performance optimization of industrial processes.

• Experience of working in a plant (production, process…). 

• Analytical competencies, capacity to solve complex problems.

• Leadership and management experience

• Good relations and listening skills with plant people, capacity to convince.

• Autonomous, driving changes.

• At ease with IT systems, including industrial systems and modelization tools.

• Professional mastery of English required, ability to work in French is desirable