Packaging Engineer at The South African Breweries (SAB)

• The Key Purpose of this role is to ensure optimum utilization of plant, raw materials and people, to produce quality product at minimum cost which meets customer requirements while complying with legislation.

Key Roles and Responsibilities:

Asset Care

• Partake in the development of the asset care plan for the packaging hall, contributing suggestions and providing expert advice.
• Implement the asset care plan for the packaging hall, ensuring that the engineering team have the required competencies.
• Ensure that asset care goals are incorporated into engineering team and individual goals.
• Audit compliance to the asset care programme by both the engineering team and the shift-based teams.
• Ensure that asset care competencies are developed in the engineering team. Where training needs have been identified, through the training controller, ensure these are addressed.
• Exercise budgetary controls over the asset care requirements of the packaging hall.

Plant Reliability

• Responsible for the overall reliability and uptime of the packaging hall.
• Lead the engineering team in the provisioning of asset care and engineering support to the shift-based production teams.
• Verify that the engineering team are carrying out routine and planned maintenance, and validate quality of work.
• Verify that the maintenance systems are working properly and that data integrity and information accuracy is maintained.
• Review plant reliability to ensure that equipment is operating optimally and to identify problems or opportunities timeously.
• Take part in maintenance problem solving, and ensure that the engineering team is applying the correct problem-solving techniques.

Plant Optimisation

• Take part in the Regional and Central Office plant optimization trials, providing advice, assistance and guidance where required.
• Evaluate impact of new plant and equipment, and sign off all plant and equipment modifications.
• Analyse plant performance data to identify opportunities for improvement to plant performance and initiate opportunity evaluation.
• Analyse plant failure modes and investigate causes for repeat failures to correct root causes.
• Take part in evaluating continuous improvement opportunities identified by the production teams or engineering support.
• Ensure that continuous improvement is built into engineering team goals and forms part of regular goal review sessions.

Team Leadership

• Lead the engineering team in a manner that engenders ownership, empowerment and team interaction.
• Lead the development of engineering team goals and ensure these are communicated and understood by team members.
• Conduct regular engineering team goal review sessions, and conduct regular one-on-one and performance reviews.
• Ensure training need analyses are conducted and training plans developed for team members.
• Ensure appropriate competencies are developed in the team, and ensure cross-skilling occurs within the engineering team.

Safety and Housekeeping

• Ensure that the engineering team apply proper safety and housekeeping procedures, and adhere to all legal requirements when carrying out their tasks.
• Ensure implementation of the appropriate SAB and legislative policies (such as OSH Act) on safety and housekeeping.
• Ensure that safety and housekeeping receive the appropriate focus through regular checks and safety audits.
• Where unsafe work practices have been identified, the packaging engineer is responsible for correcting this.
• Drive Safety and legal compliance in the Packaging Hall as a 2(7) appointee.

Key Attributes and Competencies:

• Demonstrated experience in driving commercial decisions in a packaging hall (financial, operational, people).
• A superior performance track record indicating a disciplined work ethic with passion at maintaining quality.
• Mental alertness and analytical ability.
• Managing people ability as well as ability to drive performance.
• Leadership ability (ability to lead planners, controllers and a full engineering team).
• Good interpersonal and communication skills.
• Ability to develop and control budgets.
• Ability to implement appropriate HR processes to manage, motivate and develop.
• Ability to manage complex projects of significant number.
• Ability to facilitate problem solving in a team forum.
• High level of resilience and ability to operate in a high-pressure environment.

Minimum Requirements:

• BSc Engineering or equivalent Engineering degree
• Government Certificate of Competence would be highly advantageous
• A minimum of 5 years’ experience in Production Maintenance Management with deep expertise in asset management
• Experience of managing and running a high
• Speed packaging line highly advantageous
• A minimum of 3 years’ experience in managing people