Senior Continuous Improvement Manager

Primary Job Duties And Responsibilities

• Strategic Mentorship & Matrix Leadership: Provide dotted-line leadership and coaching to onsite CI Managers and hourly leads across your assigned sites. Ensure a consistent, high standard of excellence across the complex.
• Bridge Tools to Results: Turn the One Watts Performance System (OWPS) from a set of tools into the "heartbeat" of the factory. Your focus is on making the connection between CI activities and real-world shop floor wins.
• High-Energy Gemba Execution: Lead by doing. Personally facilitate high-impact Kaizens and complex problem-solving events. You set the "gold standard" for visible, role-model behavior on the manufacturing floor.
• Strategy Deployment: Facilitate the translation of top-level business goals into a concrete, cross-functional improvement funnel that the shop floor understands, owns, and executes.
• Drive P&L & Business Impact: Identify and prioritize high-value opportunities. Track and communicate balanced-scorecard results to ensure CI work drives measurable AOP (Annual Operating Plan) success.
• Site Governance: Lead CI Steering Committees to remove organizational barriers and ensure total alignment between Operations, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and Finance.
• Lead Floor Leadership: Spend 40 – 60% of time on the shop floor actively coaching, observing, and guiding transformation activities in real time.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations, Business, or a related technical field, or in lieu of a degree, a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience.
• Operations Leadership: 10+ years in manufacturing/operations. You must have a track record of "owning" results and leading through influence.
• Leadership Depth: Direct experience in Operations Supervision or Production Management is essential. You must understand the daily pressures of a production schedule.
• The "Finisher" Mindset: A high-energy personality with an intense focus on completion and sustainment. You are passionate about seeing a project through to the finish line.
• Technical Mastery: Expert-level knowledge of Lean methods (VSM, SMED, TPM, Material Flow).
• Matrix Fluency: Proven ability to build engagement and drive outcomes with teams (CI Managers, hourly leads, and technicians) that do not report to you directly.
• Communication & Data Sense: Ability to tell a compelling story with numbers (Excel/PowerPoint) to influence everyone from the shop floor to senior leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Leverage Lean Transformation expertise or Six Sigma Black Belt.
• SAP experience preferred.