IMM Production Technician- Night Shift

General Description:

• The Injection Molding Production Technician is responsible for supporting safe, stable, and efficient injection molding operations. This position provides technical leadership in mold changes, process setup, troubleshooting, process validation, and continuous improvement.
• The technician works closely with Production, Engineering, Quality, Tooling, and Maintenance to identify and correct abnormalities, reduce process variation, improve product quality, shorten cycle times, and lower manufacturing costs. This position also coordinates and develops mold setters, standardizes production procedures, and ensures injection molding processes produce optically, cosmetically, and dimensionally acceptable products.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Promote a safety-first work environment and lead by example.
• Follow all company safety policies, procedures, and work instructions.
• Identify unsafe conditions, equipment abnormalities, and potential hazards.
• Immediately communicate safety concerns and support appropriate corrective actions.
• Ensure that mold changes, machine adjustments, and troubleshooting activities are completed safely.
• Participate in safety meetings, audits, and improvement activities.
• Injection Molding Process Support
• Set up, start, monitor, and optimize injection molding processes.
• Provide technical guidance when troubleshooting injection molding machines, molds, materials, robots, end-of-arm tooling, auxiliary equipment, and related processes.
• Identify and correct molding defects such as short shots, flash, burn marks, splay, sink marks, warpage, weld lines, contamination, and dimensional variation.
• Establish stable processing conditions within approved process parameters.
• Monitor temperatures, pressures, injection speeds, cooling times, clamp conditions, cycle times, and other critical process variables.
• Ensure that established process parameters are followed and unauthorized adjustments are prevented.
• Escalate recurring or complex technical issues to the appropriate Engineering, Quality, Tooling, or Maintenance personnel.
• Support production during machine startups, shutdowns, material changes, color changes, and new product launches.

Mold Changes and Production Setup

• Perform mold changes according to approved safety and setup procedures.
• Coordinate, schedule, track, and oversee mold-setter activities.
• Verify that molds, machines, materials, robots, end-of-arm tooling, and auxiliary equipment are ready before startup.
• Confirm proper mold installation, water connections, electrical connections, hydraulic connections, material supply, and guarding.
• Reduce setup time while maintaining all safety and quality requirements.
• Standardize setup procedures to reduce variation between mold changes and production runs.
• Train and develop mold setters in proper mold-change, setup, startup, and troubleshooting techniques.
• Ensure tools, hoses, fittings, clamps, and mold-change equipment are properly maintained and stored.

Quality and Process Validation

• Conduct processing trials and tests to validate products, equipment, materials, molds, and process changes.
• Document test conditions, process parameters, observations, measurements, and results.
• Demonstrate the effectiveness of material, equipment, or process changes through appropriate validation activities.
• Ensure validation activities comply with company procedures and customer requirements.
• Verify that process changes produce products that meet dimensional, functional, optical, and cosmetic standards.
• Review part quality during startup and obtain required approval before releasing the process for normal production.
• Support first-piece, last-piece, and periodic inspection requirements.
• Work with Quality personnel to investigate defects, customer concerns, and recurring process abnormalities.
• Support containment, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and verification of effectiveness.
• Maintain process documentation, setup sheets, process records, test results, and change histories.

Process Auditing and Standardization

• Perform routine process audits to confirm compliance with approved process parameters and work standards.
• Identify and correct deviations, abnormalities, and unstable process conditions.
• Verify that operators and mold setters are following standard work.
• Develop, update, and improve setup sheets, work instructions, checklists, troubleshooting guides, and standard operating procedures.
• Reduce variation between machines, molds, shifts, setups, and technicians.
• Support the development of standardized molding processes and meaningful process limits.
• Communicate process changes to affected employees and departments.
• Ensure that approved changes are properly documented before implementation.