Sr Research Scientist, Continuous Improvement

Location: Hershey, PA

 

Summary:

Reporting to the Manager, Salty Process Development & CI and based in the Hershey Technical Center in Hershey, PA, the Sr. Research Scientist position provides a critical leadership for Continuous Improvement (CI) projects to supper the development and implementation of product and process optimization initiatives.  They include ingredients and commodities, product design, process and manufacturing improvement for Hershey’s Salty Business Unit including SkinnyPop, Pirate’s Booty, Dot’s pretzels, Hershey Popcorn, and Pretzels Inc.  The successful candidate must be able to operate with medium to high autonomy across all initiatives is required. The successful candidate will consistently demonstrate and apply technical knowledge and expertise. This candidate can develop and share technical expertise within functional area and cross functionally within the organization. This candidate has proven problem solving skills and is a critical thinker, resulting in problem resolution and process improvements. The successful candidate can communicate complex or technical subject matter to different audiences at different levels within the organization. This candidate has the capability to influence stakeholders and leverage networks to provide solutions.  Application of Lean/Six Sigma principles are a requirement for manufacturing optimization initiatives. 

 

Specific Role Focus Area:

• Assume technical responsibility for the development, validation, and implementation of projects related to commodity and ingredient sourcing, product design, and manufacturing optimization to sustainably improve supply flexibility, dependability, and cost structure. 
• Develop initial process and product specifications, formulations, scope of work and schedule.
• Conduct proof of principle testing to evaluate technical and financial feasibility for proposed solutions.
• Review results and provide recommendations for next steps either through further testing and/or changes deemed necessary to formulation and manufacturing processes to assure process capacity and efficiency to meet the business plan.
• Prepare project reports, deduct significance of results and conclusions, and make presentations of findings to management as pertinent to complete assignments.
• Work within a team to ensure product recipe and specification documentation are complete and accurate.

 

This role will interact and partner with:

• R&D team members
• Manufacturing and Co-Manufacturing
• Engineering
• Enterprise and Salty CI teams
• QRC
• Project Management
• Procurement

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

 

Lead technical development for technical continuous improvement throughout the Salty manufacturing network (70%): Lead: 50%, Assist: 10%, Supervise: 10%.

• Actively seek new projects to support Salty CI opportunities.
• Lead/support product and process improvement initiatives throughout the Salty manufacturing network.
• Utilize food science and process engineering principals, technical training and judgment to resolve product quality, process troubleshooting and optimization initiatives.
• Utilize root cause analysis and structured problem-solving methodology to identify root cause, develop and implement solutions to projects.
• Test ideas through experimental design, collect and analyze data using analytical process tools to provide recommendations.
• Bring technical rigor to troubleshoot technical i