Analytics Leader Leverages Data to Solve Manufacturing Challenges
New Project Engineer opening offers an opportunity to meld data, modeling and a boots-on-the-ground presence to help Haskell CPG clients.
At the point where data analytics meets the factory floor, Haskell has an opportunity for a Project Engineer who will develop and execute projects and lead a team of bright, talented young analysts.
Haskell is a trusted partner to some of the world’s leading consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers. It has been ranked the No. 1 Food & Beverage Contractor two years in a row by Engineering News-Record (ENR), the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry’s leading publication, two years in a row.
As Haskell teams design, install and optimize manufacturing lines, they regularly use data analysis to determine the impacts of a new packaging line on overall output and find ways within existing systems to improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) without interrupting current production.
“I think of it as manufacturing analytics,” said Shannon Browning, Technical Lead for Analytics. “We use data to drive better decisions about engineering design for manufacturing systems. The fundamental relation is ‘data plus model equals information.’ In the data science world, they lean more heavily on the data side. We lean a little more heavily on the model side. We build models of the equipment that’s on the factory floor, and there’s data that drives that model. But we put a little more emphasis on the model side of that relationship.”
Browning and her teams build models with varying levels of complexity. They may be as simple as an Excel-based mathematical model or as complex as a 3-D simulation or emulation where operators can interact with equipment in a virtual reality environment.
“We get into simulation models that reflect a lot of detail about how the line works in reality,” she said. “We’re building a virtual factory world and using that to build and run experiments.”

The pace of the work and the variety of systems and applications are highlights of the position, she said. So is the analog part of the role, in which the analytics teams go into the field to experience manufacturing settings first-hand.
As important as data analysis is (“We do have data. There’s a lot of statistics nerdery going on here,” she said), there is a lot to be learned from putting boots on the ground and eyes on the problem. One particular manufacturing site stands as a perfect example.
“There was a process with kind of a sticky powder filling containers through conical-bottomed tanks,” Browning recalled. “There was a hammer next to the tank, and there were dents all over the conical bottom of the thing. When we asked about it, they said, ‘Oh, when product gets stuck in there, we just whack it really hard.’ It was kind of because the angle of the conical part was too shallow, so there’s this engineering problem. So, I always tell people that when you go out to a site, keep an eye out for the hammers.”
As an employee-owned company with an ownership culture, Haskell team members work to benefit clients and each other, guided by the core values of Team, Excellence Service and Trust. Strategically, Haskell operates with the direction of six strategic pillars, the first of which is to “Provide Team Members the BEST Job of Their Lives.” It offers a robust benefits package that includes a 401k match and an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which creates stock ownership for every full-time team member.
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