IMM Production Technician- Night Shift

About the Role

The Injection Molding Production Technician supports safe, stable, and efficient injection molding operations by providing technical leadership in mold changes, process setup, troubleshooting, process validation, and continuous improvement. This role collaborates with Production, Engineering, Quality, Tooling, and Maintenance teams to address abnormalities, reduce process variation, improve product quality, shorten cycle times, and lower manufacturing costs. The technician also coordinates and develops mold setters, standardizes production procedures, and ensures processes produce optically, cosmetically, and dimensionally acceptable products.

Responsibilities

• Promote a safety-first work environment and lead by example by following all company safety policies, procedures, and work instructions.
• Identify unsafe conditions, equipment abnormalities, and potential hazards; communicate safety concerns and support corrective actions.
• Ensure mold changes, machine adjustments, and troubleshooting activities are completed safely.
• Participate in safety meetings, audits, and improvement activities.
• Set up, start, monitor, and optimize injection molding processes, providing technical guidance for troubleshooting 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 parameters and monitor critical variables like temperatures, pressures, injection speeds, cooling times, clamp conditions, and cycle times.
• Prevent unauthorized adjustments and escalate recurring or complex technical issues to Engineering, Quality, Tooling, or Maintenance personnel.
• Support production during machine startups, shutdowns, material changes, color changes, and new product launches.
• Perform mold changes according to approved safety and setup procedures; coordinate, schedule, track, and oversee mold-setter activities.
• Verify readiness of molds, machines, materials, robots, end-of-arm tooling, and auxiliary equipment before startup.
• Confirm proper mold installation, water connections, electrical connections, hydraulic connections, material supply, and guarding.
• Reduce setup time while maintaining safety and quality requirements; standardize setup procedures to minimize variation.
• 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.
• Conduct processing trials and tests to validate products, equipment, materials, molds, and process changes; document test conditions, parameters, observations, measurements, and results.
• Demonstrate the effectiveness of material, equipment, or process changes through validation activities compliant with company procedures and customer requirements.
• Verify process changes produce products meeting dimensional, functional, optical, and cosmetic standards.
• Review part quality during startup and obtain required approval before releasing the process for 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.
• Perform routine process audits to confirm compliance with approved process parameters and work standards; identify and correct deviations or unstable conditions.
• Verify operators and mold setters follow 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 development of standardized molding processes and meaningful process limits.
• Communicate process changes to affected employees and departments; ensure approved changes are documented before implementation.