Plant Leader

Key Responsibilities

• Lead all day-to-day production operations, ensuring the safe, efficient, and timely manufacture of products while meeting customer expectations for quality, cost, and delivery.
• Provide direct leadership, coaching, and development to production supervisors, team leads, and manufacturing employees. Foster a culture of accountability, teamwork, engagement, and continuous improvement.
• Serve as the primary operational leader for the facility, ensuring production resources, staffing, equipment, and materials are effectively aligned to meet daily and long-term production goals.
• Drive production performance through effective scheduling, labor planning, capacity management, and execution of manufacturing priorities.
• Partner closely with Engineering, Supply Chain, Quality, Maintenance, and Planning to proactively resolve production issues, eliminate bottlenecks, and improve manufacturing flow.
• Champion Lean Manufacturing principles by identifying waste, improving standard work, implementing visual management, facilitating continuous improvement initiatives, and driving sustainable process improvements.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective action efforts to improve safety, quality, productivity, and operational reliability.
• Monitor and drive key performance indicators (KPIs), including Safety, Productivity, Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), First Pass Yield, Scrap, Labor Efficiency, On-Time Delivery, Schedule Attainment, and Inventory Accuracy.
• Ensure compliance with all safety, environmental, regulatory, and company policies while promoting a culture where safety is the highest priority.
• Collaborate with Human Resources on employee development, performance management, succession planning, and workforce planning to build a high-performing manufacturing organization.
• Participate in strategic planning, capital improvement projects, facility initiatives, and operational planning to support business growth and long-term manufacturing excellence.
• Establish clear expectations, communicate business objectives, and maintain a visible leadership presence on the production floor through daily engagement with employees.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, Operations Management, or related field (or equivalent experience for internal applicants)
• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in manufacturing, operations, plant management, or a related industrial environment
• Demonstrated success implementing lean practices in high-mix, low-volume environments
• Strong analytical, communication, and team-building abilities
• Knowledge of Lean tools (Kanban, SMED, 5S, Kaizen, A3)
• Experience working with ERP/MRP systems and manufacturing dashboards
• Preferred ISO experience
• Knowledge of ERP software, PDM software (Vantage, SharePoint)
• Six Sigma Green Belt is highly desirable