Senior Manufacturing Engineer in Wincanton

An immediate and exciting vacancy for an experienced Manufacturing Engineer to join an established team at our facility in Templecombe. Working in a Design for Manufacture environment you will provide product lifecycle support from design to manufacture. The nature of manufacturing consists of mechanical and electronic build/assembly. This is a full time role offered over 4 days (Mon - Thurs), with some flexibility on start times.

Our Opportunity

• To contribute to the definition, implementation, and maintenance of the Industrial Strategy for existing products (work cell embedded) and new products (transverse activity extending between upstream/downstream) through day-to-day technical support to the onsite industrial footprint.
• Support Procurement as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Industry to ensure that our supply chain delivers robust products.
• Preparing all data for and running Production Readiness Reviews (PRRs) on behalf of industry.
• Identify opportunities for manufacturing equipment capital purchases with financial assessment (Cost-Benefit Analysis & ROI's) completed in order to drive business competitiveness.
• Assessing the Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) of products by reviewing the product maturity with project teams to identify and minimise manufacturing risks.
• Accountable for the definition, setup, preparation and optimisation of manufacturing processes and tooling for a defined area or product line.
• Contributes to compliance of the production process with all Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) applicable regulations.
• Defines and optimises manufacturing documentation, tools, workflows for manufacturing and inspection based on the information supplied by upstream R&D engineering departments.
• Contributes to technological innovation to reduce costs and workflows, whilst guaranteeing the feasibility and reproducibility of the process.
• Attending Material Review Boards (MRBs) and Configuration Control Boards (CCBs) on behalf of manufacturing.
• Actively managing failures and changes.
• Defining, managing, and setting up the entire manufacturing process from a high level set of design requirements.
• Ensuring that product manufacturability is considered throughout the design lifecycle and that opportunities to reduce product and project cost are identified, reported, and realised wherever possible.
• Leading product DFM/A (design for manufacture/assembly) reviews.
• Leading product and process FMEA (failure modes effects analysis) reviews.
• Actively managing and driving design change to improve manufacturability.
• Mentoring junior members of the team and other engineering disciplines in DFM/A and lean manufacturing techniques.
• Liaising with designers, researchers, engineering and industry consultants to ensure that latest industry and equipment advances are identified.
• Defining and implementing manufacturing and process controls in a production environment to ensure that high level design requirements are achieved.
• Driving the assembly and proving of initial development and pre-production units to ensure that design and manufacturing lessons learnt are gathered and built into the final product solution.
• Designing the layout of the manufacturing facility including the identification of new capital equipment and tooling requirements.
• Defining and setting up new manufacturing lines using lean principles such as 5S, Kanban, SMED, 6 sigma, VSM (value stream mapping).

About You

You will either have proven experience as a Manufacturing Engineer, ideally from a time-served background and with a Mechanical or Electronic assembly background. Attributes include:

• Significant Engineering experience within a low to medium volume, light mechanical/electro-mechanical production environment.
• Awareness and use of continuous improvement techniques and implementation of lean manufacturing.
• Experience of manufacturing systems, including routings, BOMs, Concessions, Change Requests etc.
• Broad process knowledge including machining, assembly (both mechanical and electronic) and test.
• The ability to communicate clearly and freely as well as to produce high standard documentation for project and external use.
• Must be able to manage your own time with respect to customer needs and demands.

Thales Benefits

• 4 day working week.
• Annual performance bonus 8-10%.
• 28 days annual leave (Plus Bank Holidays).
• Pension contributions up to 7%.
• Healthcare Cash Plan.
• Life insurance.
• Stock options (Sharing Thales) every 2 years.
• Enhanced maternity and parental leave.
• Generous training budget and allowance to attend conferences/workshops.
• Gym and well-being memberships, Cycle to Work.
• Discounts on major retail outlets.
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program and access to mental wellbeing app.