Title: Maintenance Scheduler - Digital Transformation
Location: LaPorte, TX
Who we are:
Voted one of the Nation's Best and Brightest Companies to Work for, Kuraray America, Inc. (KAI) is a global leader in specialty chemical, fiber, and resin production. With top-of-the-line research and production facilities and a vast network of supplies from around the world, Kuraray leads the industry in specialty dental, fiber, resin, and elastomer products. Kuraray America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuraray Company, Ltd. Based in Tokyo, Japan. Kuraray has operations in 32 countries and employs more than 12,000 employees, including over 800 in the United States.
Why Kuraray:
Kuraray is building a better tomorrow, today. Our team members are dedicated to expanding our business with committed professionals who share essential values such as integrity, excellence, teamwork, and accountability.
As a part of Kuraray America, Inc., our team shares the advantages of working for the leader in specialty chemicals, resins, and fibers. Our international presence and resources allow us to be a world-leading innovator in the industries we service. Yet, despite our size, our people are more than just a number. As a new team member, you can expect to earn responsibility quickly. Our commitment to our people is visible in our comprehensive benefits package. As a Kuraray team member, you will have the opportunity to enjoy competitive salaries and benefits, incentive opportunities, and an excellent work environment.
Position Summary:
The Maintenance Scheduler is responsible for developing, maintaining, optimizing, and communicating the normal/running maintenance schedule for the facility. The position coordinates planned maintenance work across Maintenance, Operations, Engineering, Inspection, contractors, and other supporting functions to ensure work is scheduled based on plant priorities, equipment availability, labor capacity, material readiness, and operational constraints.
In addition to scheduling responsibilities, this position serves as a key contributor to Maintenance Digital Transformation (DX) initiatives. The role identifies opportunities to improve maintenance work processes through digital tools, data visualization, workflow automation, mobile technology, and improved integration of maintenance information.
The position bridges maintenance execution, planning/scheduling, SAP/CMMS data, and digital technology, with an emphasis on improving schedule compliance, workforce productivity, data quality, and visibility of maintenance performance. The role reports to the Maintenance Manager.
Responsibilities:
Safety & Compliance
- Perform all duties in compliance with Kuraray America, Inc. (KAI) safety policies, procedures, and leadership expectations.
- Identify and escalate schedule-related safety, compliance, or execution risks and support corrective actions as needed.
Maintenance Scheduling
- Develop and maintain the facility daily, weekly, monthly, and rolling maintenance schedules for normal/running maintenance activities.
- Build executable schedules from work that is ready for execution, considering plant priorities, equipment availability, labor capacity, craft requirements, contractor availability, material readiness, permits, isolations, and production constraints.
- Facilitate daily, weekly, and monthly scheduling meetings and coordinate schedule priorities with Maintenance, Production, Engineering, Reliability, Inspection, HSE, and other stakeholders.
- Balance predictive, preventive, condition-based, corrective, and improvement work within available resource capacity.
- Identify schedule conflicts, resource constraints, execution risks, and work readiness gaps before scheduled work begins.
- Adjust schedules when plant conditions or priorities change while maintaining visibility of deferred or displaced work.
- Support development of equipment outage and short-duration shutdown schedules as assigned.
Work Order & Schedule Management
- Maintain accurate work-order scheduling dates, priorities, statuses, labor requirements, and other scheduling information within SAP.
- Set available craft capacity based on labor availability and coordinate contractor capacity when applicable.
- Communicate the approved schedule and subsequent changes to affected stakeholders.
- Track scheduled versus completed work and identify recurring causes of schedule break-in, deferral, or non-completion.
- Maintain visibility of the ready backlog, resource loading, emergent work, schedule attainment, and work-order aging.
- Partner with Maintenance supervision to improve schedule execution, workforce utilization, and coordination with Production.
Systems, Reporting & Continuous Improvement
- Serve as a Maintenance focal point for assigned Digital Transformation initiatives.
- Identify manual, paper-based, repetitive, or inefficient maintenance processes that are candidates for digitalization or workflow automation.
- Work with Maintenance, Production, Engineering, IT/DX, and other stakeholders to define business requirements for digital maintenance solutions.
- Support deployment and adoption of mobile technology and paperless workflows for field maintenance execution.
- Develop and maintain maintenance dashboards and visual reporting using Microsoft Power BI or other approved tools.
- Improve the quality, consistency, accessibility, and integration of maintenance data used for decision-making.
- Analyze scheduling and execution data, including schedule compliance, planned versus unplanned work, break-in work, backlog, PM compliance, labor loading, ready backlog, work-order aging, and completion performance.
- Support user testing, implementation, training, troubleshooting, documentation, and continuous improvement of new digital tools and workflows.
- Act as a liaison between maintenance end users and technical or Digital Transformation resources.
Outages & Turnarounds
- Support scheduling of outages, statutory inspections, overhauls, turnarounds, and plant transitions as assigned..
Additional Duties
- Complete other duties, digital initiatives, and special projects as assigned by the Maintenance Manager.
Minimum Qualifications:
- High school diploma or GED.
- Minimum 3 years of maintenance scheduling, maintenance execution, reliability, operations, turnaround, or related experience in a multi-discipline process or manufacturing environment.
- Proficient user of SAP Plant Maintenance (PM) or a comparable computerized maintenance management system.
- Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain executable maintenance schedules for internal resources and external contractors.
- Working knowledge of industrial maintenance work processes and the relationship between work readiness, scheduling, execution, closeout, and performance measurement.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to coordinate priorities across Maintenance, Production, Engineering, Reliability, Inspection, HSE, contractors, and support functions.
- Proficiency with Microsoft 365 applications; experience with Microsoft Power BI, Power Platform, workflow automation, data analytics, or mobile maintenance technology is preferred.
- Ability to understand user needs, define business requirements, support technology adoption, and document sustainable digital workflows.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with a strong commitment to teamwork and collaboration.
- Ability to perform effectively under pressure while maintaining high standards of customer service, confidentiality, ethical behavior, and continuous improvement.
- Valid driver license.
Competencies:
- Customer Focus
- Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions.
- Business Insight
- Applying knowledge of business and the marketplace to advance the organization's goals.
- Cultivates Innovation
- Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful.
- Action Oriented
- Taking on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm.
- Ensures Accountability
- Holding self and others accountable to meet commitments.
- Drives Results
- Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.
- Collaborates
- Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
- Values Differences
- Recognizing the value that different perspectives and cultures bring to an organization.
- Communicates Effectively
- Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences.
- Courage
- Stepping up to address difficult issues and saying what needs to be said.
- Instills Trust
- Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.
- Situational Adaptability
- Adapting approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations.
- Tech Savvy
- Anticipating and adopting innovations in business-building digital and technology applications.
We offer a competitive compensation package that includes base pay and an annual incentive. This program is designed to reward individual performance and align overall rewards with corporate and team performance.
Our employees benefit from a robust healthcare package that includes wellness reimbursements, along with generous perks such as three weeks of paid time off, ten company holidays, paid parental leave, education reimbursement, and a matching 401k plan, among other offerings.
Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S.
Learn more at kuraray.us.com/careers/
Kuraray America, Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity/disability/protected veteran status
No third-party candidates accepted