Milliken & Company - Spartanburg, SC
posted 5 months ago
The R D Process Development Engineer - Plastics Additives role at Milliken & Company is centered around new product development specifically for the Plastics Additives Business. This position emphasizes process development, which includes supporting process improvement and manufacturing support for existing products. The engineer will engage with both internal and external manufacturing partners to pilot and scale new chemistries and processes, ensuring that innovations are effectively transitioned from the lab to production. Limited travel may be required to support ongoing project work or to provide customer or manufacturing support. The position is based at the Corporate Headquarters in Spartanburg, SC, and reports directly to the R D leader. In this role, the engineer will collaborate closely with R D chemists and engineers to create conceptual process flow diagrams (PFDs) and perform heat and mass balances based on laboratory data and experiments. They will also be responsible for developing estimates of total product costs in alignment with division processes, revising these estimates throughout the project lifecycle. The engineer will create process models and simulations, including conducting sensitivity analyses for cost impacts, and will develop P&IDs and related engineering drawings for lab and kilo-scale processes. Additionally, the engineer will translate engineering drawings into a Bill of Materials and specifications sheets for lab equipment and instrumentation. They will procure materials and construct lab and bench-scale systems within the allocated budget and schedule, operating these systems to evaluate route options and generate process data for scale-up and design. Collaboration with the Chemical Division Process Development team and external engineering partners will be essential for full-scale process designs and estimates. The engineer will also create technical packages to facilitate technology transfer to internal and external manufacturing partners, support pilot trials, and scale-up work at various plant sites. Maintaining documentation for equipment, processes, and technical packages for both internal and external use is a critical aspect of this role, along with providing accurate plans and status reports to the respective project manager.