Quality Engineer

Job Description:

Job Description

Brooks Instrument (www.brooksinstrument.com), an industry leader in flow and pressure instrumentation for critical applications, is seeking candidates for a Quality Engineer position that will be based at the company headquarters in Hatfield, Pennsylvania (suburban Philadelphia). The company has manufacturing locations in Pennsylvania, Hungary, Malaysia, and Korea, and also maintains sales and service offices throughout the world. Our high-tech products are used in laboratory and process applications in end markets such as: oil & gas, petrochemical, medical devices, waste water, life sciences, and analytical instruments. 

Brooks is a division of ITW (Illinois Tool Works), a fortune 200 company. ITW is one of the world’s leading diversified manufacturers of specialized industrial equipment, consumables, and related service businesses. The company has operations in 56 countries and employs over 50,000 employees. These talented employees, many of whom have specialized engineering or scientific expertise, contribute to ITW’s global leadership in innovation. The company is proud of its broad portfolio of nearly 10,000 active patents, and is focused on fully leveraging its highly differentiated business model to deliver solid growth with consistent best-in-class margins and return on capital.

Basic Functions

Serve as the point of contact for quality control planning, development, application, and maintenance of quality standards for processing materials into finished product.  Receive only broad supervision from the department manager and must be capable of advanced decision-making in the manager’s absence.  Product/industry knowledge is broad and support is often given to other departments as needed.  Major challenges include support of the division quality function concurrent with:

• Business growth
• Best business practices
• Introduction of new products and processes
• Meeting division continuous improvement goals
• Achieving customer satisfaction

Essential Duties and Responsibility

• Performs basic quality engineering functions, quality audits and sets quality standards for both in-process and finished products and materials.
• Reports on quality analyses, product or process non-conformance issues, and recommends necessary corrective actions and procedure changes.
• Interface with the plant management staff to ensure that quality improvement activities are in sync with plant quality and operational objectives. 
• Interface with all hourly employees, supervisors, department managers and division personnel while leading and coordinating improvement activities. 
• Coordinate the resolution of product quality concerns (process/customer) and facilitate responsiveness to customers.
• Participate in the review of customer documentation to identify and ensure fulfillment of copy exact requirements.
• Coordinate and evaluate annual product validations.
• Support and promote Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) activities.
• Verify and approve all department operation instructions and provide the necessary support for a complete understanding of the operation instructions and their application.
• Support customer in 8D responses and regular quality resolution update meetings.
• Develop/monitor first pass yield reports, scrap reports, and process audit reports.
• Initiate engineering deviation requests and product change notices.
• Determine that manufacturing processes and equipment have sufficient capability to meet customer quality requirements by analyzing capability studies, control charts, and other statistical data.
• Employ statistical process controls and techniques to reduce scrap/rework and to drive continuous improvement.
• Participate in the review of design, manufacturing, and test documentation to ensure that applicable system and contract quality requirements are met.
• Develop sampling plans, design forms for recording, evaluating, and reporting quality data, and write instructions on the use of such forms.
• Initiate plans, procedures, and/or actions to prevent/eliminate product and systemic quality problems.
• Prepare slides for regular Quality review meetings. Participate in regular quality improvement meetings.
• Write problem investigation reports and complete customer corrective action requests (eg 8D).
• Ensure quality cost concepts are understood and executed.
• Develop and administer department quality information, including the auditing of quality plans to permit identification and correction of deficiencies.
• Participate in customer visits, surveys, and audits.
• Analyze customer complaints and field failures.  Coordinate corrective action, follow-up and reporting.
• Assist in the resolution of supplier quality problems as needed.
• Participate in the development and implementation of ISO 9001 level II documentation and internal quality system audits.
• Disposition discrepant material in a manner that ensures product quality and adherence to system requirements.
• Perform project-specific tasks as required (e.g., customer required first article inspection, qualification test failure analysis, etc.) to ensure compliance to individual project requirements.
• Maintain and collect data for tracking various Operational performance and Quality trends.
• Perform analysis of data, using SPC techniques, charts, pareto, histograms, etc.
• Prepare and present analysis results/charts in Power-point/presentation format.
• Write queries and prepare reports from Trackwise data.
• Track and follow-up corrective and preventive action (CAPA), customer complaint (CC), failure analysis (FA) and similar cases in Trackwise.
• Support resolution of Quality issues both internal/external working with production and engineering teams.
• Audit processes to identify and correct deficiencies or non-conformances
• Complete customer responses, CAPA forms for quality issue resolution
• Coordinate and perform internal audits as needed.
• Provide Quality Certificate support as needed.
• Support CIP teams when requested.
• Regular attendance.
• Ability to work in a team environment and follow all safety rules.
• Other duties as assigned.

Education and Experience

• BS Degree required. 
• Knowledge/ awareness of quality engineering tools.
• 1 + years of quality engineering experience in an ISO 9001/ third party certified manufacturing facility preferred.
• Knowledge of MS Office including Excel, Word, Outlook required.   
• Project management experience and ASQ certification as a Quality Engineer desired. 
• Experience in process writing, flow-charting required.
• Experience in project/task management, and/or task-specific training desired. 
• Awareness of statistical principles.
• Experience is performing data analysis using Excel, Minitab or similar statistical programs.
• Strong MS Excel skills required. Minitab experience a plus.
• Experience in manufacturing or test environment preferred.
• Experience in Microsoft Office - Word, Excel, Power Point, Access.
• Attention to detail and ability to work in a dynamic and changing environment.
• Must be able to communicate clearly both verbally and in writing. 
• Must be diplomatic and sensitive in all communications with external contacts (Customers, Suppliers, Registrars, Assessors/Auditors, etc.) when coordinating quality improvement and corrective action activities.
  

Benefits

Our employees enjoy competitive, merit-based salary plus excellent benefits including:

• Health and dental insurance
• Company Paid Life Insurance
• Short and Long Term Disability
• 401K plan with generous company match
• Vacation, personal days and holidays
• Continuing education reimbursement program
• Flexible spending accounts 

The opportunity to join a well established (80 years in business) yet dynamically changing organization that works together as a team to meet the challenges of satisfying customers’ needs and managing rapid growth to better compete in a global marketplace.

ITW is an equal opportunity employer. We value our colleagues’ unique perspectives, experiences and ideas and create workplaces where everyone can develop their careers and perform to their full potential. 

As an equal employment opportunity employer, ITW is committed to equal employment opportunity and fair treatment for employees, beginning with the hiring process and continuing through all aspects of the employment relationship. 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, protected Veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.