Regional Production Specialist: Paper & Pulp at Sappi

About the job

• Sappi Southern Africa requires a Regional Production Specialist: Paper & Pulp to provide a technical support function for all mills in Sappi Southern Africa by assisting with improving the Mills OEE target by executing continuous improvement projects across multiple sites/departments within Sappi Southern African, with the objective of reducing waste and cost, and increasing productivity as well as drive lean area transformation across the region to improve employee engagement, and alignment with our manufacturing fundamental elements, lean processes, and business goals.

This role reports in to the Manager: Process (Regional).

The main responsibilities of the job are:

Safety and Health

•  Lead by example of safety issues and coach where needed to ensure safe working practices.
•  Implement 5S in areas of responsibility.
•  Drives safety and health in all plants during visits.
•  Follow mill protocols in safety, health and environment.
•  Create a safety mindset (based on our life saving rules) and approach individuals transgressing the rules.
•  Safely execute, lead and manage by utilizing the Lean principals to attain measurable improvements in cost, quality and delivery throughout the Sappi Southern Africa business units

Provide input into improvement projects and drive understanding thereof and improve overall effective Efficiencies (OEE) of the business.

•  Simultaneously manage multiple improvement projects by partnering with leadership and Centre's of excellence to deliver improved business results.
•  Utilise analytical support (statistical analysis) from the Lean team, to the business to facilitate solutions to complex problems i.e. quality, performance and availability.
•  Draw up a system-based reporting e.g. grade recipe for the mill teams
•  Communicating proposals and capex outcomes to stakeholders at the mill and senior management for improving OEE targets annually.
•  Collaborate with operations teams to develop value added products to improve the bottom-line profitability.
•  Undertakes and support production team during root cause analysis investigations and close out actions.
•  Submit visit reports when attending to plant visits with proposals and action plans.
•  Submit and monitor monthly reporting on action plans with timelines and responsibilities in line with departmental objectives.
•  Collaborate with the Mill management team and departmental team in achieving objectives in terms of cost savings.
•  Attend to mill shuts for auditing shut down and start up systems as well as deep dive inspections of items that require machine down time to repair.
•  Audit all plants on monthly basis to ensure conformity of standards and make recommendations for improvements where necessary; and drive understanding thereof.
•  Identify capex opportunities, both short term and long term - and communicate proposals and capex outcomes to stakeholders at the mill and senior management for improving OEE targets annually.
•  Contribute as subject matter expert to projects when required to streamline quality and downtime and assist with implementation thereof.
•  Provide input and audit for conformity into detailed process documentation, i.e. section checks and grade recipes; and drive understanding thereof.
•  Provide input on the creation of process documentation (Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams, Process Flow Diagrams, Mass and Energy Balances and process descriptions) based on a practical understanding of how the specific section of the plant operates.
•  Maintain process standards documentation based on the direction received from process engineers. Support teams in the plan to understand the process requirements and the impacts of their actions e.g. trial documents and P&ID (process and instrumentation drawing).
•  Oversee and provide input to the start - up, shut - down, Best Operating Practices and collaborate with the training department in updating operating manuals for the plant or section.
•  Provide input to high level designs produced by process engineers and provide input on the practicality of the designs and add insight into the reality of the day to day production environment as part of the machine rebuild team.
•  During mill visits conduct process audit on the plant to monitor stability to the process. Highlight deviations to the production teams and to the process engineer responsible for the area.
•  Contribute to the Cluster 4.2 (Group Technology Library) team by attending to health checks on paper and pulp machines and submit findings to management team for implementation.

The ideal candidate should have:

• N5/N6 in Pulp and Paper essential
• BTech Pulp and Paper is preferred
• Minimum of 8 years' experience on Paper machines is essential
• Minimum of 8 years' experience on Pulp machines is essential
• Project Management experience would be an advantage