Manufacturing Engineering Manager (South Holland)

About Universal Hose & Braid

Universal Hose & Braid is an established, highly specialized manufacturer of flexible metal hose, metal braid, and engineered hose assemblies, located in South Holland, Illinois. We are part of the Hyspan Group, a 100% employee-owned family of engineered products manufacturers with close to 1,000 employees across its businesses, including Hyspan Precision Products, Flexial, Flexible Metal, and Universal Hose & Braid. The group designs and manufactures expansion joints, metal bellows, flexible metal hose, and related engineered products for critical piping and equipment applications.

Our manufacturing capability brings together the technologies of Universal, Anamet/Anaconda, and American BOA. We produce annular and helical corrugated metal hose across a broad range of profiles, diameters, materials, and pressure classes; single- and double-layer metal braid; strip-wound interlock and squarelock hose; and finished hose assemblies with welded and mechanically attached fittings. Our products serve demanding applications in data centers and power generation, semiconductor and process equipment, defense and aerospace, cryogenics, and industrial OEM systems.

The business is profitable and demand for our products is growing. We are investing in people, equipment, and operating systems to build the factory for the next several decades, and this role is central to that work.

The Opportunity

We are looking for an experienced, hands-on manufacturing engineering leader to own the technical performance of our South Holland factory: equipment reliability, process control, machine setups, maintenance systems, tooling, manufacturing documentation, and continuous improvement.

Our operation runs on highly engineered, specialized production machinery: thin-wall tube mills with precision welding, corrugation and hydroforming equipment, helical hose forming machines, wire braiders, interlock and squarelock hose machines, and a finished-assembly operation with welding and pressure testing. Much of the process knowledge, including setup procedures, control plans, and maintenance routines, already exists. What the business needs is a technical leader who will understand these assets deeply, put the standards into daily practice, build the systems that keep them in practice, and establish the manufacturing foundation for significant volume growth.

You will report directly to the Vice President responsible for the business and work alongside the Plant Manager, who owns daily production and people management. You will own the technical side of the factory: how the equipment is set up, checked, maintained, run, and improved. Initially this is a hands-on, largely individual contributor role with maintenance and shop-floor systems support available to you.

The role grows with the business. The first job is to get the current equipment and processes under control. As that happens, we will be making the next phase of investment in the factory to support growing demand, and the person in this role will lead the engineering side of that work: equipment upgrades and replacements, modernized controls and automation, and the manufacturing systems that let the operation run reliably at higher volume. For the right person, this is an opportunity to own the revitalization of the plant and to take on broader responsibility as the organization develops.

Key Responsibilities

Equipment and process ownership

• Become the resident technical expert on our production equipment, including tube mills and welding systems, corrugation and forming machines, helical hose formers, braiders, interlock and squarelock machines, and assembly and test equipment.
• Understand each machine as a system: what must be checked before a run, what must be monitored during a run, and what must be maintained on a schedule. Make sure those things happen.
• Troubleshoot equipment and process problems to root cause rather than patching them. Coordinate with machine builders, outside technicians, and controls specialists when needed, and drive them to resolution.
• Own the restoration of any down or degraded equipment, including escalation of vendor and parts issues.

Process control and standard work

• Put the existing machine setup procedures, daily checks, control plans, and operating instructions back into daily use. Validate them against the equipment, correct what is out of date, and fill the gaps.
• Establish and sustain setup discipline so that a qualified operator can set up a given hose size and material repeatably and run it with confidence.
• Train and qualify operators, setup people, and maintenance personnel on the standards, and hold the floor accountable to them with the Plant Manager.
• Establish a practical preventive maintenance program, spare parts plan, and maintenance records for critical equipment.

Equipment improvement and error-proofing

• Identify where outdated controls, sensors, instrumentation, or machine components create risk, and lead practical upgrades.
• Introduce error-proofing and simple digital tools so that required checks are visible, recorded, and where justified, enforced by the equipment itself.
• Define what is needed and work with internal systems support, controls specialists, and programmers to implement it. You do not need to write the code yourself.

Manufacturing support and leadership

• Work with the Plant Manager, quality, and Hyspan group engineering on manufacturing methods, routers, drawing notes, and the implementation of engineering changes on the floor.
• Lead problem-solving on recurring production, scrap, and rework issues.
• Identify equipment capacity and reliability constraints and build the plan to support higher volume.
• Build the technical foundation and documentation that will allow the operation to be run by a broader team as the business grows.

Qualifications

Required

• 8 or more years of hands-on manufacturing engineering experience running and improving complex production lines in an equipment-intensive environment.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot and restore complex production machinery personally, not only to supervise others who do.
• Experience establishing machine setups, process checks, work instructions, and preventive maintenance in a production setting, and making them stick.
• Working knowledge of industrial controls, sensors, hydraulics, pneumatics, and electrical and mechanical troubleshooting.
• Credibility on the shop floor with experienced operators, setup people, and mechanics, and the judgment to lead change in an established workforce.
• Clear, direct communication. Comfortable working with company leadership in another location and reporting plainly on equipment condition, risks, and progress.
• Willingness to spend most of the working day on the factory floor.

Preferred

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, or Industrial Engineering. Strong equivalent experience will be considered.
• Background in tube and pipe, metal forming, stamping, extrusion, wire and cable, or similar continuous production processes.
• Familiarity with welding processes (TIG, micro-plasma, resistance) and stainless and nickel alloy materials.
• Experience modernizing legacy equipment, controls, or instrumentation.
• Experience in an ISO 9001 environment.

Direct experience with flexible metal hose is not required. Our machines and processes are well documented, and you will learn them from the people who built them. We are looking for the engineer who can take that knowledge, make the equipment run reliably, and build the discipline around it.

What Success Looks Like

In the first year, you will have:

• Taken full technical ownership of our critical equipment, with every machine's setup, daily checks, and maintenance requirements understood, documented, and in use.
• Restored equipment that was down or degraded and materially reduced unplanned downtime.
• Established setup and operating discipline that holds without your presence on every shift.
• Trained and qualified the setup, operator, and maintenance personnel on the standards.
• Completed the first round of practical controls and error-proofing improvements.
• Given company leadership a reliable picture of machine capacity, condition, and constraints, and a plan to support growth.

From there, the role moves from stabilizing the factory to leading its modernization, with expanded responsibility available to the right person as the business grows.