As Quality Manager Nylon for the EU I handle various customer questions . This includes investigating and reporting on customer quality complaints, answering customer requests for information and providing quality support to Customer Service and Commercial Teams. Furthermore, as site quality lead I work together with Commercial and Business Operations teams on quality-related items for SAP. I also actively participate in internal quality audits (ISO 9001) as well as external audits (ISO 9001 certification, customer audits).

In the role of Process Engineer I support the daily operations for batch polymer. This includes management of recipes (including set up of new product types) and critical process parameters, supplying technical expertise in case of production issues and experimentation to improve the overall processes in terms of yield and product quality.In recent years I have been actively involved in the introduction of new technologies and tools for the site, such as Microsoft PowerBI and OSISoft PI/SeeQ.

In the role as Laboratory Analyst I provided technical support in case of non-standard analyses requests and troubleshooting of operational issues. Together with site (Operations, Process Technology) as well as external resources (Business, Technical Marketing) I investigated customer quality complaints in detail and reported on the findings and corrective actions, thereby improving the site performance on product quality.I supervised several interns (MBO/HBO level) during their internships and acted as temporary laboratory supervisor during absences of the QC supervisor. Finally, I participated in internal and external quality audits, both for the ISO9001/14001 certifcation as well as customer quality audits.

Arkema BV Location Vlissingen is part of the Arkema group, headquartered in France. On the Vlissingen site, products made include Impact Modifiers (IM) and various organotin compounds such as Certincoat TC100, used in the glass-coating industry. My main role as Research Chemist (junior from 2006-2010, senior role from 2011 onwards) was the development of new Organotin compounds and processes to make them. As such I managed and actively worked on a long-term project (3-4 years) in which a new catalytic process was developed. Its commercial implementation has resulted in a significant cost reduction (> 10 %). In several smaller sub-projects I co-developed economical routes for catalyst production and recycling of the metal value post-production. In another long-term project, which focussed on further developing a new, breakthrough approach to synthesize alkyltin halide compounds, I realised significant improvements in catalyst performance. This involved ligand synthesis (> 40 new ones), catalyst screening, carrying out DoE experiments and applying QSAR studies to find the best catalyst. As a side-project I developed, together with 3 coworkers, a new Monoorganotin based PVC stabilizer. My contribution focused on the initial development of its synthetic route (up to 200 gram scale) and to provide analytical expertise (using NMR, GC, GC-MS) during scale-up of the process. The corresponding patent application was published in 2011. In several short-term projects, for both in-company and external customers, I worked on the custom synthesis of a number of organic and organometallic compounds. This included active involvement in the complete route from laboratory experiments to pilot plant scale production (50 L). I provided daily guidance and supervision for students (BSc/MSc level, 1-2 per year) during their internships at the R&D departments, on a variety of subjects.

As part of a PhD project of Dr. A. R. McDonald, I synthesized several novel C,N-type (phenyl-pyridine) ligands, their Ir complexes and characterized them using NMR, GC-MS and MALDITOF-MS.