Industrial Engineer
About Zipline
Do you want to change the world? Zipline uses drones to deliver critical and lifesaving medicine to thousands of hospitals serving millions of people in multiple countries. Our mission is to provide every human on Earth with instant access to vital medical supplies. Join Zipline and help us make this a reality for billions of people.
Our aircraft and ground equipment are the tools that enable our mission. Our Manufacturing team is composed of the dedicated women and men who produce those tools and our Industrial Engineering team are the ones who allow us to scale by increasing the capability and capacity of our production lines. Specifically, the Industrial Engineer will own the deployment, upgrade and optimization of the Manufacturing Execution System (MES); manufacturing line design and layout; time studies, line capacity analysis and modeling; manufacturing process optimization.
The ideal Industrial Engineer will use their process improvement experience to quantitatively assess current production/business system performance and execute change to reduce cost and optimize capacity. This role demands excellent communication and interpersonal skills as well as a holistic understanding of manufacturing operations. The Industrial Engineer will not only execute on change, but also prioritize projects based on opportunity, will work across departments with production, design, quality, finance, supply chain, demand planning, production planning, and various engineering teams to improve manufacturing operations and reduce cost and will be able to balance short-term tactical improvement with long-term business process and systems improvement.
What You'll Do
- Ramp the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Ground Equipment (Nest) production lines by characterizing baseline performance and capability of each component and drive actions to maintain or improve performance as defined by modeled capacity and measured throughput.
- Analyze production to quantify manufacturing uptime, availability and reliability metrics including, but not limited to: Quality (first pass yield), overall equipment efficiency (OEE), performance (cycle time), availability (uptime) and investigate bottlenecks to identify root cause and countermeasure to maximize throughput.
- Create and implement tools to audit efficiency and identify cost reduction opportunities across Zipline.
- Define and manage operational metrics for current and future Nest and UAV production systems.
- Calculate, propose, and implement new methods and processes for existing production systems.
- Ensure production lines meet uptime, availability and reliability metrics.
- Actively use data sources (e.g. MES reports) to quantitatively evaluate and track tool performance and create programs to improve relevant metrics.
- Manage and communicate improvement opportunities and implementation plans to all relevant levels and functions in Nest and UAV production.
- Develop and manage deployment of new functionality within the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) including creation of Business Requirements Documents (BRDs), Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS) and pass/fail criteria.
What You'll Bring
- B.S. in Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Operations Research, or Engineering Management with 5+ years of work experience preferred.
- Outstanding critical thinking and communication skills, with a very high level of emotional intelligence, autonomy, and servant leadership.
- Innate ability to fully comprehend new processes and systems quickly, with high attention to detail.
- Industrial cost control/reporting/analysis experience in high volume manufacturing environments.
- Advanced-level MS Office skills (primarily Excel and Visio).
- Leadership/management experience and/or end-to-end project management experience.
- Experience with industry-standard problem-solving methodologies (A3, ATS, UPS), preventive and autonomous maintenance concepts, time/motion study analysis, continuous improvement (6 sigma techniques, lean manufacturing), and change management.
- Experience with applied mathematics and operations research (linear and non-linear programming, stochastic simulation methods).
- Experience with any/all of the following: Simulation modeling software (e.g., FlexSim, AnyLogic), data visualization software (e.g, Tableau), design software (e.g., SolidWorks, CATIA).
- Advanced-level MS Office skills (primarily Excel and Visio).
What Else You Need to Know
Must be willing to travel domestically and internationally.
Zipline is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, military or veteran status, citizenship, or other characteristics protected by state, federal or local law or our other policies.
We value diversity at Zipline and welcome applications from those who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. If you like the sound of this position but are not sure if you are the perfect fit, please apply!