Plant Manager - Fort Wayne

Key Responsibilities

• Lead all plant operations with full accountability for safety, environmental compliance, quality, productivity, delivery performance, and cost management.
• Drive a strong safety culture by ensuring compliance with OSHA, environmental regulations, company policies, and safe work practices; lead incident prevention, investigation, and corrective actions.
• Oversee the production of magnet wire products, including coordination of drawing, annealing, insulating, enameling, winding, packaging, and related support processes, as applicable to the facility.
• Ensure production schedules are achieved while maintaining customer specifications, quality standards, and on-time delivery requirements.
• Direct plant leadership across production, maintenance, engineering, quality, warehousing, and support functions to achieve operational goals.
• Develop and execute plant operating plans, budgets, capital plans, and continuous improvement initiatives aligned with company strategy.
• Monitor and improve key performance indicators such as safety performance, scrap, yield, throughput, downtime, labor efficiency, customer complaints, and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Lead efforts to reduce waste, improve process capability, optimize equipment utilization, and control manufacturing costs.
• Partner with engineering and quality teams to maintain process discipline and product consistency for magnet wire applications requiring precise electrical, dimensional, and coating performance.
• Ensure preventive and predictive maintenance systems are effective and that critical equipment reliability is sustained.
• Support new product introductions, process changes, and capital projects to improve capacity, quality, and operational performance.
• Build a culture of accountability, teamwork, communication, and employee involvement through visible leadership and regular plant presence.
• Hire, coach, develop, and evaluate plant leadership and workforce talent to strengthen bench depth and succession planning.
• Collaborate with supply chain, customer service, finance, human resources, and corporate leadership to align plant performance with business needs.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective action efforts for operational issues, quality concerns, and customer escalations.
• Ensure compliance with company systems, audits, documentation requirements, and applicable customer or industry standards.
• Prepare and present plant performance updates, forecasts, and improvement plans to senior leadership.
• Promote housekeeping, 5S, and disciplined operating standards across the facility.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations Management, Business, or a related field.
• Minimum 7–10 years of progressive manufacturing leadership experience, including experience leading teams in a plant or large production environment.
• Magnet wire and/or copper forming into shaped wire (rectangular and squares) manufacturing experience preferred.
• Demonstrated success managing safety, quality, production, maintenance, and cost performance in a manufacturing setting.
• Strong knowledge of lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, and structured problem-solving methods.
• Experience with budgeting, financial performance management, and capital planning.
• Strong leadership, communication, coaching, and team development skills.
• Ability to analyze data, identify trends, and make sound operational decisions.
• Working knowledge of quality systems, process control, and manufacturing compliance requirements.
• Proficiency with ERP/MRP systems and standard business software.