Lab Leader

Michigan Sugar; Bay City (MI); On-site; USD 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

Michigan Sugar is seeking a Lab Leader for the Bay City facility to oversee daily laboratory operations and staff during factory shifts. You will serve as the technical lead for tests, ensuring accurate chemical analyses and reliable process data.

The role requires hands-on experience with lab instrumentation, data analysis, and QA/QC oversight, with responsibility for staff training and safety compliance within a sugar processing environment.

Qualifications

• High school diploma or GED required; chemistry knowledge or training preferred.
• One year of general college chemistry required.
• Experience operating lab instrumentation and data systems desired.

Responsibilities

• Oversee daily laboratory functions and shift staff.
• Ensure testing per SOPs and schedule; trend lab data and report irregularities.
• Manage QA/QC program for instruments and maintain data integrity.
• Train new laboratory personnel in techniques, formats and PPE.
• Maintain communication with lab bench to ensure proper sample reporting.

Skills

Laboratory instrumentation

Data analysis

Calculations

Safety procedures

Mobility in plant

Education

High school diploma or GED

General college chemistry (1 year)

Tools

RAPID

DataParc

Labsheets

Job description

Excellence. Pride. Integrity. Compassion. Trust. Are you ready to plant your career in a place where words like these serve as the foundation for doing business every day? At Michigan Sugar, our purpose is Making Life Sweeter, and our mission is Creating Growth and Opportunity.

Michigan Sugar Company has a full-time opportunity for a Lab Leader for our Bay City facility located at 2600 S Euclid Ave., Bay City, MI 48706.

Job Summary:

The Lab Leader provides comprehensive oversight of daily laboratory functions and staff during factory shifts. This role serves as the primary technical lead for shift, ensuring the accuracy of chemical analyses and the integrity of process data. The Lab Leader maintains versatility to perform all laboratory duties (sample carrier, bench chemist, and desugar bench chemist) and provides critical support for factory operations through advanced troubleshooting and data trend reporting.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Station Management:
  • Oversees all lab stations to ensure testing is completed per SOPs and scheduled timelines.
  • Reviews and trends lab sheets per shift, investigating any unusual patterns, missing data, or abnormalities.
  • Acts as the second layer of troubleshooting for lab data. Reports irregularities to shift supervisors, management, and the Factory Chemist.
• Inventory Control:
  • Measures and maintains accurate inventories of sugar silos, pellet silos, molasses tanks, and juice tanks.
• Lab Inventory:
  • Manages the inventory of all chemicals, glassware, and standards; submits orders to Senior Chemist to maintain necessary stock levels.
• Equipment Maintenance:
  • QA/QC Program: Manages the QA/QC program for all laboratory and plant instrumentation to ensure they function within tolerances.
  • Routine Maintenance: Performs and tracks routine maintenance, such as cleaning cells and changing bulbs, to ensure optimal instrument performance.
  • Acts as the first layer of support for all laboratory equipment.
• Periodically monitors lab personnel to ensure test methods are accurately followed.
• Assist with the training of new laboratory personnel on the proper laboratory techniques, reporting formats, and PPE.
• Communication:
  • Ensure effective communication between the sugar bench and sample carriers to ensure all required samples are obtained, processed and correctly reported.
  • Communicate all required information and process anomalies with supervision, lab leader and factory chemist.
• Responsibility Towards Food Safety & Quality:
  • Ensure retain samples are appropriately stored, labeled and rotated, as required, per retain policy
• Auditing:
  • Assist with periodic sanitation inspections
  • Ensure the lab is kept in a clean and sanitary condition
• Process Analysis:
  • Perform special projects and any other required analysis of process steps against known target ranges. Report irregularities.
• Safety:
  • Use proper precautions and personal protective equipment (PPE) while performing all laboratory analyses.
  • Must adhere to factory PPE requirements.
  • Maintain a clean, safe, and organized work environment.
  • Read and understand appropriate SDS’s for the job station.
  • Understand OSHA regulations for the lab and help to maintain an adequate level of lab safety.
• Other Duties:
  • Software – must be or become proficient in the RAPID, DataParc, and labsheets applications
  • All other duties as assigned

Necessary Skills:

• Must be able to operate sensitive laboratory instrumentation.
• Needs to have the ability to perform calculations related to the required analyses.
• Use of computers and calculators is necessary.
• Be able to traverse the factory, grounds and/or climb up various tanks as necessary to perform duties.
• Be able to lift and move totes or sugar bundles of up to 50 lbs. as necessary.

Qualifications:

• An ability to perform a wide variety of laboratory techniques in a consistent, accurate, and timely fashion.
• A working knowledge of the use of personal computers, especially typical spreadsheet and database applications.
• A basic knowledge of chemistry and quality control methods is a job requirement, and the employee must either have that knowledge or be able to gain it through training.
• Education: High School diploma or GED equivalent.
• Technical Training: One year of general college chemistry is required.

Physical Requirements:

• This position requires repetitive lifting of samples up to 1L (<10lbs) in size.
• An ability to stand for long periods is required as there are multiple samples to test every hour.
• The ability to walk around the plant, in a hot or cold environment, to obtain needed samples.

Training Required:

• General factory safety requirements (Right to Know)
• Food-related Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), SQF, and HACCP
• The following laboratory techniques must be learned using the appropriate MSC or other recognized official methods:
  • All SOP’s for Sample Carrier, Sugar Bench, Beet Bench, Desugar Bench, and Environmental Bench.
  • ICUMSA methods
  • Equipment usage

Job Summary:

The Lab Leader provides comprehensive oversight of daily laboratory functions and staff during factory shifts. This role serves as the primary technical lead for shift, ensuring the accuracy of chemical analyses and the integrity of process data. The Lab Leader maintains versatility to perform all laboratory duties (sample carrier, bench chemist, and desugar bench chemist) and provides critical support for factory operations through advanced troubleshooting and data trend reporting.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Station Management:
  • Oversees all lab stations to ensure testing is completed per SOPs and scheduled timelines.
  • Reviews and trends lab sheets per shift, investigating any unusual patterns, missing data, or abnormalities.
  • Acts as the second layer of troubleshooting for lab data. Reports irregularities to shift supervisors, management, and the Factory Chemist.
• Inventory Control:
  • Measures and maintains accurate inventories of sugar silos, pellet silos, molasses tanks, and juice tanks.
• Lab Inventory:
  • Manages the inventory of all chemicals, glassware, and standards; submits orders to Senior Chemist to maintain necessary stock levels.
• Equipment Maintenance:
  • QA/QC Program: Manages the QA/QC program for all laboratory and plant instrumentation to ensure they function within tolerances.
  • Routine Maintenance: Performs and tracks routine maintenance, such as cleaning cells and changing bulbs, to ensure optimal instrument performance.
  • Acts as the first layer of support for all laboratory equipment.
• Periodically monitors lab personnel to ensure test methods are accurately followed.
• Assist with the training of new laboratory personnel on the proper laboratory techniques, reporting formats, and PPE.
• Communication:
  • Ensure effective communication between the sugar bench and sample carriers to ensure all required samples are obtained, processed and correctly reported.
  • Communicate all required information and process anomalies with supervision, lab leader and factory chemist.
• Responsibility Towards Food Safety & Quality:
  • Ensure retain samples are appropriately stored, labeled and rotated, as required, per retain policy
• Auditing:
  • Assist with periodic sanitation inspections
  • Ensure the lab is kept in a clean and sanitary condition
• Process Analysis:
  • Perform special projects and any other required analysis of process steps against known target ranges. Report irregularities.
• Safety:
  • Use proper precautions and personal protective equipment (PPE) while performing all laboratory analyses.
  • Must adhere to factory PPE requirements.
  • Maintain a clean, safe, and organized work environment.
  • Read and understand appropriate SDS’s for the job station.
  • Understand OSHA regulations for the lab and help to maintain an adequate level of lab safety.
• Other Duties:
  • Software – must be or become proficient in the RAPID, DataParc, and labsheets applications
  • All other duties as assigned

Necessary Skills:

• Must be able to operate sensitive laboratory instrumentation.
• Needs to have the ability to perform calculations related to the required analyses.
• Use of computers and calculators is necessary.
• Be able to traverse the factory, grounds and/or climb up various tanks as necessary to perform duties.
• Be able to lift and move totes or sugar bundles of up to 50 lbs. as necessary.

Qualifications:

• An ability to perform a wide variety of laboratory techniques in a consistent, accurate, and timely fashion.
• A working knowledge of the use of personal computers, especially typical spreadsheet and database applications.
• A basic knowledge of chemistry and quality control methods is a job requirement, and the employee must either have that knowledge or be able to gain it through training.
• Education: High School diploma or GED equivalent.
• Technical Training: One year of general college chemistry is required.

Physical Requirements:

• This position requires repetitive lifting of samples up to 1L (<10lbs) in size.
• An ability to stand for long periods is required as there are multiple samples to test every hour.
• The ability to walk around the plant, in a hot or cold environment, to obtain needed samples.

Training Required:

• General factory safety requirements (Right to Know)
• Food-related Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), SQF, and HACCP
• The following laboratory techniques must be learned using the appropriate MSC or other recognized official methods:
  • All SOP’s for Sample Carrier, Sugar Bench, Beet Bench, Desugar Bench, and Environmental Bench.
  • ICUMSA methods
  • Equipment usage

Familiar with all Quality Standards, Calibration and Verification, and retest Procedures

Michigan Sugar Company was founded in 1906 when six smaller sugar companies merged their operations. In 2002, Michigan Sugar Company became a grower-owned cooperative and in 2004, it merged with Monitor Sugar Company to form the company that exists today.

Michigan Sugar Company is headquartered in Bay City and has sugarbeet processing facilities in Bay City, Caro, Croswell and Sebewaing, Michigan. Its nearly 900 grower-owners plant and harvest up to 160,000 acres of sugarbeets each year in 20 Michigan counties, as well as Ontario, Canada. Those beets are sliced at the factories and turned into about 1.3 billion pounds of sugar annually.

That sugar is sold to industrial, commercial and retail customers under the Pioneer and Big Chief brands.

Michigan Sugar Company has 930 year-round employees and an additional 1,100 seasonal workers. It is the No. 1 employer in Huron County, the No. 2 employer in Bay and Sanilac counties and the No. 3 employer in Tuscola County. The company’s annual payroll is more than $65 million and its annual local economic impact is about $500 million.

Michigan Sugar Company is the third largest of nine sugarbeet processing companies in the United States and Michigan is one of 11 states where sugarbeets are grown in the country.