Director, Operational Excellence - Pneumatics

If you’re looking for a special place to build or grow your career, IDEX offers opportunities in engineering, marketing, sales, supply chain, operations, HR, finance, and more across more than 40 diverse businesses globally. The IDEX Performance Pneumatics Group—comprised of Gast, Airtech, and US Valve—is a global leader in engineered solutions for vacuum, pressure, and flow control, with engineering and manufacturing centers in Benton Harbor, Michigan; Rutherford, New Jersey; and Linthicum, Maryland. Our products power critical applications across industries, including data centers, medical and life sciences, industrial automation, and energy systems.

About the Role

The Director of Operational Excellence will lead enterprise-level continuous improvement, advanced processing, and operational excellence across the Pneumatics platform, including Gast Manufacturing, Airtech Vacuum, and U.S. Valve. This role drives large-scale transformational initiatives, deploys the IDEX Operating Model, and builds sustainable continuous improvement (CI) capability within each business unit by developing leaders to identify, lead, and sustain high-impact improvement projects. The Director translates platform strategy into clear priorities, metrics, dashboards, and operating cadences that improve safety, quality, delivery, cost, productivity, and customer experience.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a platform-wide CI and transformation roadmap aligned to business unit priorities, strategic growth objectives, and measurable operational outcomes.
• Lead complex, cross-functional transformation projects from opportunity identification and business case development through implementation, adoption, and sustained benefit realization.
• Drive Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, value stream improvement, and rapid improvement initiatives to enhance productivity, cost, quality, delivery, safety, and customer experience.
• Coach and develop business unit leaders, site leaders, and functional owners to build local CI capability, lead improvement projects, remove barriers, and sustain operational discipline.
• Communicate the operational excellence strategy clearly across all levels of the organization, ensuring leaders and teams understand priorities, expected outcomes, ownership, and progress against goals.
• Develop platform-level KPIs, visual dashboards, governance routines, and stakeholder review cadences that drive transparency, accountability, root cause problem solving, and timely decision-making.
• Establish common processes, metrics, standard work, playbooks, and governance across Gast, Airtech, and U.S. Valve while allowing appropriate local adaptation by business unit.
• Champion consistent adoption of daily management, goal deployment, monthly reviews, 80/20 focus, and disciplined execution.
• Lead automation, digital productivity, Industry 4.0, AI-enabled workflow improvements, and advanced manufacturing process initiatives, with emphasis on reducing transactional waste, improving decision speed, and increasing productivity.
• Partner with Operations, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Finance, Commercial, and IT leaders to identify opportunities, align stakeholders, validate financial impact, and sustain improvements.
• Define, track, and report KPIs; use dashboards, data, and regular operating reviews to drive accountability, escalation, and continuous improvement.

Measures of Performance

• Safety performance and proactive risk reduction through standard work, corrective actions, and CI project execution.
• Productivity and cost savings delivered through validated transformation projects, automation opportunities, and AI-enabled transactional process improvements.
• Quality, delivery, lead-time, and customer experience improvement across targeted value streams and business units.
• Adoption of daily management, goal deployment, standard work, monthly operating reviews, dashboards, and stakeholder review cadences.
• CI capability maturity within each business unit, including number of trained leaders, active project owners, and locally led improvement projects.
• CI pipeline health, project completion rate, financial validation, dashboard accuracy, and sustained benefit realization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations Management, Supply Chain, Business, or related field required; Master’s degree or MBA preferred.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent advanced CI certification strongly preferred.
• 10+ years of manufacturing, operations, supply chain, or operational excellence experience, including leadership of large-scale transformation or continuous improvement programs.
• Experience leading multi-site or multi-business unit improvement initiatives in an industrial manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to coach business unit leaders, develop CI project owners, and build sustainable improvement capability across functions and sites.
• Strong knowledge of Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, daily management, standard work, goal deployment, performance management systems, and financial validation of improvement projects.
• Experience defining strategic metrics, developing executive dashboards, communicating performance trends, and aligning key stakeholders around priorities and corrective actions.
• Experience with automation, digital productivity tools, AI-enabled process improvement, advanced manufacturing processes, KPIs, dashboards, and data-driven decision-making.

Skills

• Leadership & Influence: Builds alignment and drives results across functions, sites, and business units without direct authority.
• Strategic Execution: Translates business strategy into transformation priorities, measurable outcomes, project roadmaps, and disciplined execution routines.
• Change Leadership & Talent Development: Coaches BU leaders, develops CI project owners, builds local capability, and leads sustainable culture change.
• Communication & Stakeholder Alignment: Communicates strategy, metrics, risks, and progress clearly to executive, functional, and site stakeholders.
• Results Orientation: Uses data, dashboards, metrics, and disciplined follow-through to deliver measurable improvements and sustained benefit realization.

Pay

The compensation range for this position is $141,800.00 - $212,800.00, depending on experience. This position may be eligible for a performance-based bonus plan.

Benefits

Our comprehensive U.S. benefit offerings include:

• Health benefits
• 401(k) retirement savings program with company match
• Paid time off (PTO)
• Additional benefits and rewards (more information available on our career page)