DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The Plant Manager is responsible for providing leadership, direction, and resource stewardship for a high-volume manufacturing site located in North Brunswick, NJ. This role is accountable for driving timely and impactful improvements to the operating environment and for delivering performance at or above expectations for safety, quality, delivery, cost, and their team. He/She will lead the execution of cross-functional strategies and plans that ensure we execute the company's manufacturing excellence roadmap. The goals of this role are to manage structured change and combine long-term thinking with near-term actions and decisions.
Successful candidates demonstrate their commitment to their team by taking direct responsibility for the safety of the people who work in your business, building trust and valuing the experience of the team around them and look to develop the people, sets high expectations for self and others, is a change agent and an effective communicator, is comfortable frequently interacting with senior leaders, and shows personal resilience. This position reports to the Director of Operations.
Operations Leadership
- Set an unwavering expectation that relationships between supervisors, peers, and employees are respectful and inclusive
- Maintain environments that influence how we feel physically and mentally at work and reflect attention to detail not only in the quality of our output, but in our daily productive routines
- Develop site strategies for COGS reduction while managing growth and/or expansion
- Reduce costs of goods measured as savings year-to-year including direct labor and overhead
- Manage and ensure successful new product/piloting
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Take responsibility for the safety and security of the people who work in our business, the products we supply to customers, and the company's physical assets; identify, assess, and address any immediate safety and security issues
- Create optimized schedules that balance production efficiency, deliver supply, and employee well-being by selectively and strategically using OT
- Ensure compliance with quality assurance measured in our QA Index and Right First Time
- Help drive all TQM activities within the sites
Operations Excellence
- Invest a substantial amount of time reinforcing our manufacturing excellence roadmap, holding his/herself and others accountable for performance and leadership commitments
- Identify and implement ways of working that make lean thinking and employee engagement a way of life in the plant: focus will be on the process, not the individual
- Drive simplification efforts within the site, particularly those that impact operational costs
- Help manage the effort for all new equipment, assist in establishing a project team, clearly establishing a Commissioning/Qualification/Verification (CQV) process approach
Talent & Organization
- Invest significant effort on talent offense and aligning training and development of teams to mindsets and skillsets important to the future of our business
- Provide tactical direction as needed for all operations groups
- Develop and train leadership and technical groups
- Use qualitative and quantitative approaches to forecasting labor demand and mix
Culture
- Foster a culture, including ways of working and behaviors, that is congruent with our mission, values, and success model
- Take an active role in the community: raise awareness about opportunities the manufacturing industry can offer, nurture future manufacturing talent, grow their network and the company's reputation, and give back
- Develop and deliver approaches to improve culture based on employee engagement survey data
- Develop and implement solutions that drive a high-performance culture
EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS
- Bachelor's degree required, preferably in engineering or business, or in place of a degree, a minimum of 12-15 years of significant, relevant professional experience
- Minimum of 8 years previous experience in manufacturing, including packaging, process engineering, warehousing, and assembly
- Minimum of 4 years in people management role, including leading a cross disciplinary leadership team
- Proven track record of application of lean tools, processes, and systems to deliver sustained continuous improvement preferred
- Experienced leading teams through compliant execution of formally defined management systems
- Experience participating on cross-functional teams, driving decision-making, and overseeing operational and financial metrics
- Possesses strong knowledge of manufacturing supply chain functions, including planning, logistics, quality, materials management, and inventory control
- Requires minimal travel (10%)
- All Microsoft Office products; AutoCAD and statistical packages desired