Plant Manager (Wausau)

About the role

As Plant Manager, you'll own the operational and financial performance of the plant, reporting to the Director of Operations. This is a highly visible role. Leadership is deliberately selective about who steps into this seat because the plant is being folded into a growing, multi-site portfolio. You'll inherit a strong foundation and a clear mandate: protect and mature what's been built, continue formalizing the plant's quality systems, and keep raising the bar on operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• Own the full operational and financial performance of the plant, staying close to every part of the business rather than just production output.
• Lead, sustain, and mature a Lean and TPS-based operating system, including pull production, kitting, visual management, and a strong corrective action discipline, acting as an owner of the system rather than a caretaker of someone else's work.
• Build out formal quality management practices, continuing a maturing quality function's progress toward a more rigorous, compliance-ready state.
• Drive plant operations, safety culture, operational excellence, production, and efficiency across a multi-shift environment, including growing capacity where the business needs it.
• Develop your managers and supervisors into a genuine Winning Culture, mentoring functional leaders and building real succession depth for the plant.
• Champion continued technology adoption. This plant is often first to pilot new systems and tools, and you'll be expected to keep pushing that mindset forward.
• Create, recommend, and manage capital projects that support the plant's continued transformation.
• Assure attainment of business objectives and production schedules while holding product standards that exceed customer expectations on complex, engineered products.

Requirements

• Solid, proven managerial experience in a manufacturing environment, ideally within a highly structured, systems-driven operation such as automotive, aerospace, or a comparable industry.
• Deep familiarity with Lean or TPS principles is a strong plus, and coming from outside building products is completely welcome.
• Hands-on experience owning budgeting, quality assurance, and equipment troubleshooting at the plant level.
• Direct experience operating within, or ideally helping build, a TPS-based or comparable Lean operating model, including pull systems, kitting, visual management, and standardized corrective action processes.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on managerial experience.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt certification is a plus.
• A builder's mindset. You should be genuinely energized by standing up new systems and processes from scratch rather than only maintaining what already exists.
• A collaborative, transparent leadership style. This plant's culture runs on trust, open communication, and continuous improvement, not top-down control or micromanagement.
• Comfort bringing clarity to ambiguity. You'll be expected to sort through complexity and give your team clear direction, especially as the business scales and conditions shift.
• Strong coaching and mentoring instincts. Developing managers and supervisors, and building real succession bench strength, is a core part of this role.
• Resilience and steadiness under pressure. You should be comfortable leading through variability in volume and cost conditions without losing focus on the fundamentals.
• A genuine respect for structure and discipline on the plant floor, paired with the curiosity to keep improving it rather than treating it as finished.

Benefits

• Industry-competitive benefits at the lowest cost to the employee.
• PTO and holidays, including floating holidays you can choose.
• A pay-for-performance culture with potential for annual raises and bonuses.
• Training to equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to succeed.