Material Flow Engineer, Ford Energy

Ford Energy is a newly formed, wholly-owned subsidiary of Ford Motor Company dedicated to accelerating U.S. energy independence. Leveraging Ford’s century of manufacturing excellence and world-class battery energy storage systems (BESS) technology, Ford Energy designs, manufactures, and services grid-scale and commercial DC battery energy storage systems (BESS).

As a Material Flow Engineer, you will lead material flow initiatives within the facility to enable continuous production in a high-paced, highly automated, next-generation gigafactory. Your primary focus will be to manage and optimize the supply chain for all on-site Material Handling activities. You will lend essential expertise to support our manufacturing process engineering efforts, helping us enhance safety, quality, and productivity across operations.

Responsibilities

• Lead with Purpose: Apply engineering principles and analytical techniques to establish, optimize, and continuously improve high-volume battery storage manufacturing and assembly processes.
• Innovate: Use your entrepreneurial mindset to drive production throughput, line balancing, and labor efficiency for a massive manufacturing site.
• Empower Others: Create a culture of lean manufacturing excellence, fostering an environment where standardized work and data-driven production solutions thrive.
• Drive the development and installation of direct and indirect labor standards and methods, incorporating ergonomic and safety standards, while tracking labor and ensuring efficient manpower utilization and line balancing.
• Conduct job ergonomics evaluations and analyze production and non-production operations to identify those requiring study, developing new or improved methods and standards as needed.
• Provide engineering support for material flow process; document standards and procedures, provide training, overall adherence and maintenance to ensure materials are available in designated stock, markets and line locations throughout the facility.
• Work with Planning & Inventory Control, Production, Material Handlers, and Supply Chain to ensure robust policies are available and practiced and strive for continuous improvement.
• Apply technical expertise, commensurate with formal training and limited job experience, in the development of material flow processes.
• Design and/or develops material flow processes and equipment.
• Recommend changes to increase safety, reduce costs, improve quality and optimize efficiency.
• Lead facilitator of plant layout change management activities.
• Develop floor space analyses to confirm storage requirements and recommend practical solutions where required.
• Assist in qualifying manual and powered material handling equipment requirements.
• Work to improve material flow and manage materials and inventory consistent with Lean principles.
• Lay out market, sequencing, and kitting areas to facilitate material handling, process flow, space utilization, and labor.
• Define and manage in-plant storage and call systems to maintain inventories; define and develop methods to achieve organizational objectives.
• Provide vehicle and pedestrian flow/congestion/safety analyses and recommend practical solutions where required.
• Interact on a regular basis with other functional groups and vendors on technical and/or administrative matters.
• Work with Production, Production Control, Supply Chain, Quality and other engineering departments.
• Prepare detailed plans, generally spanning several months, vital to complete assigned projects.
• Develop and approve schedule milestones.
• Develop and coordinate labor, facility and equipment requirements for assigned projects.
• Propose alternate plans for economic evaluation.
• Administer technical procedures including process and work procedures.
• Implement an industrial engineering system (standard cost data, capacity and equipment requirement forecasting, shop floor control system).
• Forecast and manage operating expense and capital budget requirements.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Industrial Engineering preferred)
• 5 or more years of experience working in a manufacturing environment (internship and/or coop experience will be considered)
• Ability to travel as needed for both domestic and international, up to 50%
• Flexibility to support business needs by working across various shifts

Benefits

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.