Continuous Improvement Specialist (Expert)

CHS Inc. is a leading global agribusiness owned by farmers, ranchers and cooperatives across the United States that provides grain, food and energy resources to businesses and consumers around the world. We serve agriculture customers and consumers across the United States and around the world. Most of our 10,000 employees are in the United States, but today we have employees in 19 countries. At CHS, we are creating connections to empower agriculture.

Summary

CHS, Inc. is seeking an experienced Continuous Improvement Specialist to support our complex operational locations, including oilseed processing plants, grain export terminals, and high-throughput facilities. This CI expert will play a critical role in identifying improvement opportunities, leading transformation efforts, and embedding operational excellence into daily practices. This includes reducing variability, optimizing throughput, increasing asset reliability, and enhancing process safety. You will work closely with site leaders, engineering, maintenance, and operations teams to drive sustainable improvements in efficiency, cost, safety, and quality.

While this role is remote, preference will be given to candidates based near the Minneapolis, MN area or the New Orleans, LA region, due to proximity to key operational sites. This position requires regular travel to operational sites (30–50%).

Responsibilities

Operational Excellence :

1. Lead CI efforts tailored for high-complexity industrial sites with continuous or batch processing (e.g., oilseed crush, refining, loadout, storage).
2. Use Lean / Toyota Production System, TPM, and RCA tools to eliminate losses, reduce downtime, and enhance OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness).
3. Facilitate kaizen events and develop site-specific standards for process optimization and reliability.
4. Partner with operations and maintenance to implement preventative and predictive maintenance strategies.
5. Analyze mass balance, energy usage, and production data to identify bottlenecks and optimization levers.
6. Collaborate on capital project scoping to ensure CI opportunities are incorporated in early design phases.

Leadership & Change Management

1. Coach frontline and senior leaders in CI principles, focusing on behavior change and daily management systems.
2. Drive cultural transformation by embedding CI thinking into site leadership practices.
3. Build local capability in continuous improvement through formal and informal training.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

1. Act as a liaison between corporate CI, operations, reliability, engineering, and EH&S and other supporting teams to ensure alignment on priorities.
2. Lead site-level cross-functional teams to execute improvement initiatives.
3. Support standardization of CI practices across facilities to ensure consistency and knowledge sharing.

Perform other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications (required)

1. High School diploma or GED
2. 7+ years of experience in continuous improvement roles in manufacturing, industrial processing, or ag business.

Additional Qualifications

1. Bachelor’s degree preferred in business, engineering, finance or related field.
2. Demonstrated success applying CI tools in asset-intensive environments.
3. Experienced in leading projects and organizational change management.
4. Experience collaborating with other stakeholders to achieve tasks (IT, Finance, Business Units, etc.).
5. Experience in oilseed crushing, refining, grain handling, or similar processing environments.
6. Experience with CMMS and production data systems (e.g., PI, SAP PM, MES).
7. Proven ability to influence without authority in union and non-union environments.
8. Strong knowledge of Ag Business.
9. Strong understanding of process and process design, including leveraging technology to achieve.
10. Excellent communication, organizational, inter-personal, staff managerial, problem-solving skills.
11. Proven ability to work in a fast-paced environment, prioritize projects and deliverables, and interact effectively with cross-functional teams.
12. Self-motivated, innovative, and ability to initiate and lead change.
13. Creative and change-oriented continuous improvement process skills.
14. Multi-lingual is a plus.
15. PMP, Lean certification or LSS Green / Black Belt preferred.

Physical Requirements

• Travel around 30-50%

CHS offers a competitive total rewards package. Compensation includes base wage and, depending upon position, may include other earnings such as bonus, incentives and commissions. Actual pay offered will vary based on multiple factors which may include, without limitation, experience, education, training, specialized skills and certifications, minimum wage / salary requirements under local law.

Benefits include medical, dental, vision, wellness programs, life insurance, health and dependent care spending accounts, paid time off, 401(k), pension, profit sharing, short- and long-term disability, tuition reimbursement and adoption assistance, subject to the eligibility requirements for each benefit plan.

CHS is an Equal Opportunity Employer / Veterans / Disability.

Please note that any communication from a CHS recruiter would be sent using a chsinc.com email address. In addition, a CHS recruiter will not ask for confidential information over the phone or in an email, or request money from a candidate involved in an offer process. If you have questions regarding an employment opportunity, please reach out to chscareers@chsinc.com ; to verify that the communication is from CHS.