Equipment Maintenance & Reliability Supervisor

Maintenance & Reliability Supervisor

As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you will do meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale and helps bring our Mission to lifeenabling our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer.

The Maintenance & Reliability Supervisor leads the maintenance organization supporting manufacturing equipment, facilities, and utilities at the Mebane site. This role is responsible for developing a proactive, reliability-focused maintenance organization that improves Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), maximizes equipment availability, reduces unplanned downtime, and ensures safe, compliant, and effective maintenance execution.

This leader develops the technical capability of the maintenance team while driving Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Tiered Daily Management (TDM), formalized problem solving and Root Cause Analysis (RCA), preventive and predictive maintenance, spare-parts management, Good Documentation Practices (GDP), and maintenance KPI performance.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop maintenance personnel to achieve safety, quality, reliability, OEE, and operational objectives. Build team capability through structured training, hands-on teaching, cross-training, and individual development.
• Lead preventive, predictive, corrective, and emergency maintenance for manufacturing equipment and facility systems. Ensure work is effectively prioritized, planned, scheduled, executed, documented, and closed.
• Drive the organization from reactive maintenance toward a planned, preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance culture.
• Use OEE and equipment-loss data to identify and prioritize reliability improvements. Partner with Manufacturing, Engineering, and Quality to address Availability, Performance, and Quality losses, with particular focus on maintenance-driven Availability losses.
• Lead and sustain TPM practices that create shared ownership of equipment condition and performance between Maintenance and Operations, including autonomous maintenance and basic equipment care.
• Actively support Tiered Daily Management, using visual management, equipment status, downtime, maintenance KPIs, planned work, and escalation processes to establish priorities and drive accountability.
• Lead formalized problem solving and RCA for significant and recurring equipment failures. Coach technicians in structured troubleshooting, ensure corrective actions address true root causes, and verify effectiveness to prevent recurrence.
• Own and drive maintenance and reliability KPIs, including OEE/Availability losses, unplanned downtime, planned versus reactive maintenance, PM compliance, MTBF, MTTR, repeat failures, backlog, maintenance spend, and RCA effectiveness.
• Establish an effective critical-spares and MRO inventory strategy based on equipment criticality, risk, lead time, and business impact. Maintain appropriate stocking levels, inventory accuracy, BOMs, and obsolescence plans.
• Ensure effective use of the CMMS, including work-order quality, equipment history, PM/PdM execution, maintenance backlog, failure documentation, and data integrity.
• Ensure maintenance activities and records meet GDP, site procedures, quality-system, safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Lead continuous improvement using PPI, Kaizen, OEE loss analysis, maintenance data, and structured problem solving to improve equipment reliability, maintainability, and performance. PPI/Kaizen is already an expectation in the existing position.
• Partner with Manufacturing and Engineering on equipment installation, modification, lifecycle management, reliability improvement, and maintenance strategies for new and existing equipment. These responsibilities align with the existing scope of the position.
• Provide maintenance oversight for plant utilities and facility systems, including HVAC, chillers, dryers, compressors, cooling towers, pumps, electrical systems, and supporting infrastructure.
• Manage the maintenance budget, external service providers, resource utilization, and repair-versus-replace decisions while supporting capital and equipment lifecycle planning.
• Maintain strong standards for safety, LOTO, 5S, contractor compliance, and regulatory compliance across maintenance activities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Electromechanical Engineering, Engineering Technology, or a related discipline preferred, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 8+ years of progressive industrial maintenance experience preferred, with demonstrated experience leading maintenance technicians or skilled technical personnel.
• 3+ years of maintenance leadership or supervisory experience preferred.
• Strong experience with preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance in a manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, controls, and/or automation systems.
• Experience with TPM, Tiered Daily Management, OEE, formalized problem solving/RCA, CMMS, maintenance KPIs, and critical-spares management strongly preferred.
• Experience supporting injection molding (IMM), plastics manufacturing, automated assembly, packaging, or similar high-volume manufacturing equipment preferred.
• Experience working within a regulated manufacturing environment with strong GDP and documentation discipline preferred.
• Experience with Lean, Kaizen, PPI, or comparable continuous-improvement systems preferred.
• Relevant electrical, HVAC, mechanical, maintenance, or reliability certifications are a plus.

Knowledge & Leadership Capabilities

• Strong knowledge of industrial mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, controls, automation, and facility systems.
• Strong systematic troubleshooting and equipment-diagnostic capability, including the ability to read and interpret technical drawings and schematics.
• Working knowledge of OEE, TPM, equipment reliability, PM/PdM, MTBF, MTTR, RCA, maintenance planning and scheduling, and spare-parts management.
• Ability to use equipment and maintenance data to identify losses, establish priorities, and drive measurable improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to teach, coach, and develop technical personnel.
• Strong communication, organization, prioritization, and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Ability to balance immediate production needs with long-term equipment, health and reliability.
• Demonstrated commitment to safety, quality, GDP, accountability, and continuous improvement.