We're hiringEngineering & Continuous Improvement
Process Improvement Specialist
- $61,750 to $96,250 per year
- Full-time
- Salaried
- Fort Worth, Texas
About the role
We blend, bottle, and can distilled spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails for the biggest beverage-alcohol brands in the world, names you'd recognize from any back bar. We run two bottling lines and two canning lines. A lot of what our best operators know about running them has never been written down.
This job writes it down. You turn the work on our production floor into written procedures, checklists, and one-point lessons (a single page, mostly photos, on one task). Then you teach them, check that they're followed, and keep improving them. It's a new role, and you'll work across every team. To start, you report directly to the executive team. Once we hire a Continuous Improvement Manager, you'll report to them.
What you'll do
- Learn every job that can be written down. Shadow each team and film the operator who does a task best while they talk it through, step by step. Write the steps, rewrite them with the people who'll use them, add photos, and test them on every shift.
- Rebuild the checklists that start and stop a line. A startup checklist for each line, station by station. A shutdown checklist for each way a run ends: the end of a tank, a shift that ends partway through one, end-of-week cleaning, a short pause.
- Put them on tablets. Steps like the sanitizer flush, date-code checks, and seam checks on cans can't be skipped, and every sign-off is time-stamped. You build a record into each procedure, so every step leaves something we can check later.
- Teach it at the line. Train each shift on new and changed procedures where the work happens, and keep track of who has learned what.
- Walk a line every day. After startup, during a live shift, and after shutdown. Compare what was checked off with what you see. When they don't match, find out why, and decide what to fix: the standard, the checklist, the training, or the setup.
- Keep every procedure current. Review each one on a schedule, and again after a near miss, a quality hold, a short- or over-staffed shift, a late start, or a long stop. Fix what was missing. Keep one current, dated version of every procedure, form, and checklist in Quality's controlled library.
What it takes
- You can watch someone do a task and write it down as steps a new person could follow the first time.
- You've made a process stick: a checklist other people actually used, or written steps for a task only one person knew. You can show us what changed after.
- You can break a job into its tasks, their order, what each one takes to learn, and how you'd check it was done right.
- You ask questions. You ask people to explain it one more time, and you come back later to confirm the details. You take the time to understand every job in the building from the side of the person doing it, and you can explain the same procedure to a new hire on second shift and to the executive team.
- You run your own work. You keep your own list, move it forward without being chased, and report in writing where it stands every week. When a near miss, a new product, or a change of plan from us moves something else to the top, you switch and note where you left off.
- Busy people give you what you need. Leads running tight lines don't have much spare time, so you ask short, exact questions, or you book a shadow session ahead of time. You ask for help when you need it. And you follow up, close the loop, and stay a step ahead of the executive team.
- On your feet on the floor for much of the day, with regular time on every shift.
Helps, but not required: writing SOPs, work instructions, or training material in any plant · time as an operator, lead, or QC technician on a production line.
You don't need to have done this in a plant. If you've written a restaurant's opening and closing checklists, kept training records in the military, or run load-in for live events, we want to hear from you.
This is the wrong job if: you'd rather write the procedure at a desk than learn it at the line.
Compensation
$61,750 to $96,250 per year depending on experience, plus a discretionary performance bonus. PTO, medical and dental. Full-time, salaried, on-site in Fort Worth.
How we hire
- ApplyAbout 20 minutes, including a 1 to 2 minute video you record on your phone. No cover letter.
- Video callA short conversation about you: your background; your interests and career goals; your skills and experience; your general disposition and way of working.
- Site visitCome see us, wear a safety vest, meet the team. 30 to 45 minutes, and part of it is hands-on: we talk through a real problem from our floor and how you'd get it onto a page.
- OfferTo the best candidate we meet.
Why join Very Good
- We have fun doing cool stuff. You'll work on industry-leading alcohol innovation projects with brands people know around the world. Your friends will be impressed.
- Nearly every manager in this building started here at entry level. We promote from within and we cross-train on purpose. The procedures you write are how the next person learns the job, and how they move up.
Fine print
This position works in and around an active production facility and loading dock: moving machinery, forklift traffic, glass, and ethanol vapors, with noise and ambient temperatures. It requires frequent standing, walking, bending, reaching, and regularly lifting up to 50 pounds. PPE is required in designated areas. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable qualified individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Very Good Manufacturing is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. This job description describes the general nature of the work performed and is not an exhaustive list of duties, responsibilities, or qualifications. Offers of employment are contingent on satisfactory completion of a background check and a post-offer drug screen in accordance with company policy. Employment with Very Good Manufacturing is at-will.
Apply
About 20 minutes, no cover letter. You'll upload a resume and a short phone video, so have your phone handy. The application opens in a new tab.
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