Plant Manager

About the role

At Engineered Products, we design and manufacture high-performance material handling and storage solutions with a focus on quality, durability, and operational efficiency. We are a fast-paced, growth-oriented manufacturer where execution matters and where strong leaders have the opportunity to drive meaningful impact and advance their careers.

Position: Plant Manager
Reports to: President/COO
Location: Easley, SC

The Plant Manager leads daily operations across Engineered Products’ metal fabrication operation, with accountability for production, Operational Excellence (OpEx), maintenance, tooling, material flow, and shipping & receiving. This high-visibility role drives Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost performance across the full operating value stream. This is a hands-on, shop-floor leadership role. The successful candidate will recognize what “good” looks like in a high-mix fabrication environment, build capable leaders, ensure equipment and tooling readiness, improve flow, and establish a disciplined operating system that delivers reliable customer, workforce, and financial results.

Responsibilities

• Leads a multi-shift, single-site manufacturing operation with responsibility for production, maintenance, tooling, Operational Excellence, material flow, and shipping & receiving.
• Provides direct leadership to plant supervisors and functional leaders while partnering closely with Quality, Engineering, EH&S, Supply Chain, Human Resources, Finance, Sales, and Project Management.
• Operates with an uncompromising Safety → Quality → Delivery → Cost (SQDC) mindset—in that order.
• Spends 50%+ of time on the shop floor, developing people, confirming standards, and driving execution.
• Improves safety performance and closes corrective actions promptly and effectively.
• Improves first-pass yield while reducing scrap, rework, defects, and cost of poor quality.
• Delivers production schedule attainment, on-time delivery, labor productivity, and controlled operating expense.
• Improves equipment uptime, preventive maintenance compliance, tooling readiness, inventory accuracy, and material flow.
• Builds a capable leadership team, effective skills coverage, and a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
• Delivers verified OpEx benefits that improve profitability, cash flow, asset utilization, and customer service.
• Operational Leadership & Production Planning: Lead all plant operations including fabrication, welding, powder coat, assembly, material flow, maintenance, tooling, and shipping & receiving.
• Own execution against the approved production schedule, aligning labor, equipment, tooling, materials, and capacity to customer and backlog priorities.
• Lead daily and weekly operating reviews covering schedule attainment, constraints, staffing, quality, maintenance, and shipment priorities.
• Coordinate with Sales, Project Management, Engineering, Purchasing, and Production Planning to resolve constraints and protect customer commitments.
• Ensure timely and accurate ERP transactions for labor, material movement, production completion, scrap, inventory, shipping, and job status.
• Monitor and actively manage throughput, labor efficiency, schedule attainment, backlog flow, equipment uptime, tooling readiness, inventory accuracy, and on-time shipment.
• Identify constraints across people, equipment, tooling, materials, information, and logistics, and drive timely corrective action.
• Operational Excellence & Lean Manufacturing: Own the plant OpEx roadmap and serve as the site’s primary Lean leader, translating business priorities into measurable improvement plans.
• Lead tiered daily management, KPI reviews, visual controls, leader standard work, process confirmation, and structured problem-solving.
• Build and execute a prioritized pipeline of productivity, quality, cost, lead-time, capacity, equipment reliability, and changeover improvements with clear owners and verified benefits.
• Coach leaders and employees in waste identification, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and practical Lean methods on the shop floor.
• Sustain improvements through standard work, training, process audits, and management follow-up.
• Maintenance & Reliability: Own maintenance strategy and execution for production equipment, facilities, and critical plant utilities.
• Establish and enforce preventive and predictive maintenance programs that improve uptime and reduce unplanned downtime.
• Prioritize maintenance work using risk, production impact, and asset criticality while ensuring timely completion and effective communication.
• Manage maintenance performance, spare-parts readiness, contractor support, and asset lifecycle planning within approved budgets.
• Tooling Management: Own the availability, condition, control, and lifecycle management of production tooling, fixtures, gauges, and shop aids.
• Ensure tooling is designed, built, maintained, stored, and issued to support safe, repeatable, and efficient production.
• Implement tooling identification, preventive maintenance, calibration coordination, inventory control, and readiness standards.
• Partner with Engineering and Quality to resolve tooling-related issues and improve manufacturability, repeatability, and changeover performance.
• Shipping & Receiving: Own safe and accurate receiving, material staging, finished-goods handling, shipment preparation, and outbound execution.
• Ensure inbound materials are received, inspected, documented, and routed promptly, with discrepancies escalated and resolved.
• Drive on-time, complete, and damage-free shipments through disciplined scheduling, packaging, loading, documentation, and carrier coordination.
• Maintain inventory accuracy, space utilization, material traceability, housekeeping, and compliance within shipping and receiving areas.
• Safety, Environmental & Compliance: Champion a zero-incident safety culture and demonstrate visible safety leadership on the shop floor.
• Ensure compliance with OSHA requirements, company policies, and applicable environmental, waste-handling, air, stormwater, and hazardous-material requirements in partnership with EH&S.
• Ensure hazards, incidents, and near misses are investigated promptly and corrective actions are completed and sustained.
• Hold frontline leaders accountable for safe work practices, risk mitigation, housekeeping, and environmental compliance.
• People Leadership: Lead, coach, and develop supervisors and functional leaders to drive accountability, problem-solving, and performance.
• Maintain an effective workforce plan covering staffing, shift coverage, attendance, overtime, skills matrices, cross-training, recruiting, and retention.
• Establish clear expectations and use consistent performance management, recognition, and corrective action to reinforce standards.
• Develop bench strength and succession plans for critical leadership and technical roles.
• Build a culture of urgency, ownership, respect, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
• Quality & Customer Focus: Own manufacturing quality performance and ensure production consistently meets customer specifications, drawings, and internal standards.
• Ensure adherence to first piece, in-process, final inspection, control-plan, standard-work, and material-traceability requirements.
• Ensure nonconforming material is contained, dispositioned, and prevented from moving downstream or reaching the customer.
• Partner with Quality and Engineering on FAI, customer complaints, root-cause analysis, and effective corrective action.
• Reduce defects, rework, scrap, and cost of poor quality through process control and sustained improvement.
• Financial & Business Performance: Own operating budgets for assigned functions and actively manage labor, maintenance, tooling, freight, inventory, utilities, and other controllable costs.
• Translate operating performance into improved profitability, cash flow, working capital, and asset utilization