Principal Engineer Molding

About the role

At Abbott, we empower smarter medical and economic decision-making to transform how people manage their health at all stages of life. Our diagnostics division runs more than 10 million tests daily on Abbott’s diagnostic instruments, providing critical lab results for millions of people.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for the molding activities to attain strategic engineering objectives for the Abbott Diagnostics Division.
• Ensure compliance with safety regulations, policies, and procedures.
• Manage multiple, often concurrent, projects and meet department deadlines.
• Manage molded commodities over their lifecycle, including tactical and strategic activities to support ongoing business such as product, process, quality, and cost improvement initiatives, supplier, and resin changes, obsolescence.
• Troubleshoot molding issues in conjunction with suppliers and lead/support internal investigations as needed.
• Work closely with molding suppliers to ensure reliable supply of parts.
• Lead mold design activities in coordination with suppliers, Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT), and validation of molding manufacturing cells in accordance with division engineering best practices and procedures.
• Drive Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) for assigned projects.
• Create and maintain project schedules, oversee cross-functional team activities to achieve program objectives, including transfer of molds to new suppliers, startup of new suppliers.
• Maintain project controls and reporting for cost scope and schedule; develop execution strategy including procurement support; balance multiple demands within assignment, e.g., execute contingency plans to recover from schedule slippage or financial overruns.
• Interface frequently with inter-organization and outside customer contacts.
• Represent the organization in providing solutions to difficult technical issues associated with projects.
• Have awareness of the potential consequences (defects & failure modes) of design changes to established processes.
• Participate in cross-functional teams to investigate and resolve molding issues.
• Specify all molding cell equipment from mold, molding machines, EoAT, machine side automation, etc., including process design and development, tooling/automation design, procurement, and qualification plan.
• Full understanding and development of the relationship between molding key process input variables (KPIVs) and key process output variables (KPOVs) for plastic components throughout the value stream.
• Drive Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) at equipment manufacturers per ADD equipment URS and mold build standards. Write specifications, design verification/validation protocols and reports.
• Provide technical process support to other engineers within the group and mentor and develop junior team members.
• Read, challenge, develop and maintain a working knowledge of Quality Procedures and Work Instructions and apply knowledge to support completion of mold qualification.
• Lead new mold testing and sampling, DOE, material sampling, engineering changes, etc.
• Internal lead for supplier-driven changes impacting molding equipment.
• Capacity planning in alignment with long-term plan and short-term changes in demand.
• Work regularly with operations, supply chain, quality, and various suppliers and perform capacity analysis for molds, injection molding machines, and make recommendations for future investment.
• Manage measurement system analysis, design control and execution of equipment selection, process development, validation, FMEA and Design of Experiments (DOEs).

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or technical discipline desired, or equivalent experience plus demonstrated competence.
• 5+ years technical work experience with 3+ years of plastic injection and/or blow molding design and process support experience, preferably in the medical device industry.
• Knowledge of plastics processes, resins, tooling required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering in a technical discipline such as Plastics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, etc.
• Knowledge of mold making and design fundamentals, molding process development, plastic resin behavior and required tooling/equipment.
• 5+ years technical work experience with 3+ years of plastic injection and/or blow molding design and process support experience.
• Knowledge of plastics processes, resins, tooling required.
• 8+ years of experience in a molding engineering position, preferably in the diagnostics or medical device industry.
• Knowledge of FDA QSR's and ISO requirements preferred.
• Knowledge of PFMEA and DFMEA.
• Knowledge of Abbott’s internal Design Plan process.
• Working knowledge of MS Office products including MS Word and advanced MS Excel and PowerPoint capability.
• Proven ability to participate in team atmosphere, exhibit and create a sense of urgency and maintain effective working relationships with peers, customers, and vendors.