Title: Fermentation Technical Services Leader - Harbor Beach, MI
Location: Michigan-Harbor Beach
Dow AgroSciences LLC, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, is a top-tier agricultural company that combines the power of science and technology with the "Human Element" to constantly improve what is essential to human progress. Dow AgroSciences provides innovative technologies for crop protection, pest and vegetation management, seeds, traits, and agricultural biotechnology to serve the world's growing population. Global sales for Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, are $4.5 billion.
Dow AgroSciences is seeking to fill the position ofFermentation Technical Services Leaderfor Harbor Beach, MI.
Background information on Site and position:
Harbor Beach is located on Lake Huron about 1.5 hours east of Midland, Michigan. The site manufactures the naturally occurring insecticides, Spinosyns, for Dow AgroSciences. The plant operates a fermentation process to grow the organism which produces the
insecticide coupled to an extraction process for product separation, purification, and packaging.
This opportunity offers the successful candidate the opportunity for exposure to and participation in many aspects to site operations that they normally wouldn't see on a larger site (responsible care, community relations, HR, site emergency manager, etc)
The job has a standard 5 day per week work schedule. The Harbor Beach plant operates 24 hours per day seven days a week, and as a member of the Harbor Beach operations technical support staff, the flexibility to provide technical support as needed after hours and on weekends is a requirement of the role. Periodic weekend & holiday technical support on-call is also a job requirement.
The Harbor Beach organization is an empowered organization and the selected candidate will be a member of the day support team as well as many of the empowered teams.
To be successful in this role, the candidate must be willing to spend time outside their office - in the control room and/or field, shops, etc to understand issues, assist with troubleshooting, and to help solve day to day problems.
Assignment Scope:
DAS is looking for a senior fermentation expert to lead the operation and development of the fermentation based products (e.g. Spinosyns) at the Harbor Beach manufacturing site in Michigan.
This individual would have technical oversight responsibility for all the fermentation operations at Harbor Beach. This would include all components of the manufacturing flow, these being:
Raw material acquisition and storage
Inoculum preparation
Seed tank operation
Fermentation operation
Microbiological and analytical laboratory
Specific to this assignment there would be the following responsibilities:
*
Technical mentoring/coaching for all employees associated with fermentation in Harbor Beach
* Ensure proper operational protocol for the process
* Ensure that the process operates consistently and is meeting its quality and business objectives by identifying and reducing factors which increase process variability and adversely impact process performance.
* Provide technical support for campaign turnarounds, to ensure the correct transition of protocols and process control logic to operations.
* Work closely with resources in HB fermentation pilot plant and Indianapolis based R&D fermentation group on projects to improve performance and develop the process further.
* Develop a portfolio of process changes to improve productivity and reduce costs.
* Partner with IT to develop systems for efficient data management, data mining and process monitoring.
* Provide regular technical updates on manufacturing performance to the leadership team.
* Prepare campaign summary reports and technical documents which describe major process improvements or process troubleshooting activities.
B.S. or M.S. in Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, Microbiology or Biotechnology is required.
10-15 years of experience in large scale fermentation is preferred
Secondary metabolite fermentation would be a minimum requirement.
