Maintenance Scheduler

Synthomer is a leading supplier of high-performance, highly specialised polymers and ingredients that play vital roles in key sectors such as coatings, construction, adhesives, and health and protection - growing markets that serve billions of end users worldwide. Headquartered in London, UK and publicly listed there since 1971, we employ c.3,900 employees across our 5 innovation centres of excellence and more than 29 manufacturing sites across Europe, North America and Asia. Around 20% of our sales volumes are from new and patent protected products.

At our innovation centres of excellence in the UK, Germany, China, Malaysia and Ohio, USA we collaborate closely with our customers to develop new products and enhance existing ones tailored to their needs, with an increasing range of sustainability benefits. Since 2021, we have been proud holders of the London Stock Exchange Green Economy Mark, which recognises green technology businesses making a significant contribution to a more sustainable, low-carbon economy.

This role reports directly to the Maintenance Support Manager and is responsible for driving long-term asset performance and reliability through data-driven analysis and preventive and predictive strategies. The role leads planning, scheduling, and coordinating preventative, predictive, and regular maintenance work, and performs analysis of work-order information, project demands, and maintenance execution to identify opportunities to improve processes. The position is accountable for ensuring that required inspections are completed and documented on a timely basis. This position also actively participates in activities related to maintenance and reliability excellence, including root-cause failure analysis and procedure standardization.

Job Responsibilities:

• Build daily, weekly, and long-term maintenance schedules for preventive, predictive, and corrective tasks.
• Collaborate with the Maintenance Support Manager, Maintenance Supervisors, and Area Maintenance Coordinators to schedule manpower, resources, and job priorities.
• Act as the central link between maintenance technicians, operations, storeroom staff, and outside contractors.
• Identify opportunities to bundle work to improve efficiency during unit downtime or outages.
• Communicate upcoming work requirements to Operations, Maintenance, and support groups in a timely manner.
• Oversee the site resident contractors and provide daily guidance on job priorities.
• Ensure all work orders and maintenance log items are reviewed, entered, and closed in SAP, with complete and accurate supporting documentation.
• Track maintenance KPIs such as schedule compliance, backlog levels, and planning accuracy.

• Support PSM activities related to job planning and scheduling, ensuring timely completion of action items and proper documentation in SAP/CMMS.

• Assist the condition monitoring program for the site, ensuring accurate data collection for vibration, oil analysis, thermography, and other predictive technologies.

• Participate in Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and methodologies such as FMEA and Bad Actor Management to prevent recurrence.

• Conduct field walk-throughs to identify and document job requirements, scope, and procedures.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to resolve chronic issues and implement long-term reliability improvements across Operations, Maintenance, Stores, and Engineering.

• Support internal and external reliability audits and assessments to ensure compliance, continuous improvement, and alignment with site standards.

Qualifications:

This safety critical position supports within the Maintenance Workflow by scheduling and collaborating in the coordination of all routine and shutdown maintenance work. This position must ensure that a sufficient amount of work is planned to maintain plant reliability.

• High school diploma/GED required; a degree in mechanical, industrial, or electrical fields is preferred.
• 2 to 5 years of background in manufacturing, industrial maintenance, or operations coordination.
• Strong mechanical/electrical knowledge and ability to read engineering drawings.
• Strong knowledge of work management processes, labor estimating and resource balancing.
• Strong working knowledge of plant / facilities equipment.
• Strong communication and coordination skills across multiple departments.
• Ability to prioritize workload in a fast-paced production environment
• Proficiency with a CMMS or enterprise resource tools like SAP.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel.

• Experience in a union environment preferred.

• Supervisory/People Management Experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Associate in Applied Science degree or a Bachelor’s Degree preferred.
• Supervisory/People Management experience.
• Strong knowledge of work management processes, labor estimating and resource balancing.

• Strong understanding of skilled crafts such as mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation.

• Experience with reliability strategy methodologies such as Root Cause Analysis (RCA), FMEA, Bad Actor management, preventive/predictive optimization, and equipment criticality assessment to support long-term asset performance improvement.

• Leadership Competency requirements: Demonstrate a working proficiency level in the Competencies of Driving Improvement in Others, Driving and Managing Teamwork, and Communication Effectiveness.

• Core Competency requirements: Customer Orientation, Results Orientation, Technological Orientation, Teamwork, Initiative, Business Ethics and Communication Effectiveness, Relationship Building.

• Coaching, meeting management and facilitation skills.

Working Requirements

• Must be able to come in on the off shifts as needed once suitable training has been administered.

• This is a salary exempt position with on-call responsibilities.

• Supervisor back-up, PM Turnaround support, off-hours coverage and weekend duty as required.

• Minimal travel may be required, less than 5-10%.

Global Benefits Overview

• Competitive, market-aligned compensation

• Discretionary global bonus scheme

• Discretionary Long-Term Incentive Plan (LTIP) - for senior positions

• Company car or car allowance - varies by region and role

• Healthcare - tailored to regional locations

• Parental leave and family support - maternity, paternity, adoption (aligned with regional policies)

• Working options - flexibility where it matters, based on role and business needs

• Learning & development opportunities - training, online platforms, buddy/mentorship programs, Internal Synthomer University with L&D offers

• Wellbeing support - employee assistance program (EAP), mental health resources, wellbeing initiatives

• Retirement / pension contributions - plans vary by country

• Culture of Inclusion - where everyone can thrive

• Performance culture, global reward & recognition programmes