Plant Manager

Plant Manager

General Description

The Plant Manager provides full operational leadership for the facility, accountable for safety, quality, delivery, cost, and people development. This role builds a disciplined operating system, develops strong leaders, and ensures the plant meets customer commitments while driving year over year performance improvement.

Responsibilities

Production performance — Own daily throughput, uptime, cycle times, and delivery performance. Ensure stable, predictable operations.

Quality management — Lead the plant to meet or exceed quality objectives; ensure QMS compliance and rapid issue resolution.

Safety culture — Champion a zero incident environment. Ensure safety is embedded in pre shift meetings, behaviors, and accountability.

Cost control — Build and manage the plant budget; deliver annual cost reduction targets through process improvement and waste elimination.

Talent development — Strengthen supervisory and operator capability; build succession plans and upgrade talent to meet future business needs.

Performance management — Set clear KPIs for safety, quality, cost, delivery, and employee relations. Hold leaders accountable for results.

Employee relations — Maintain open communication, fair treatment, and a positive work environment aligned with company values.

Daily management system — Ensure robust tiered accountability, problem solving, and communication routines.

QMS oversight — Maintain compliance with all quality, regulatory, and customer requirements.

Lean deployment — Drive Lean Manufacturing, visual controls, standard work, and continuous improvement across all departments.

Cross functional alignment — Partner with engineering, maintenance, quality, and program management to ensure coordinated execution and planned downtime.

Budgeting & forecasting — Prepare and manage departmental budgets; forecast labor, materials, and capital needs.

Staffing & scheduling — Set manpower plans and schedules to meet customer demand efficiently.

Operational problem solving — Resolve production, processing, and facility issues quickly to prevent delays and minimize cost.

Job Requirements

Work Experience

10+ years manufacturing leadership with increasing responsibility

5+ years direct plant or operations management in automotive, industrial, or high volume production

Proven success leading supervisors and managers

Demonstrated results in safety, quality, cost reduction, throughput, and delivery

Experience with Lean systems (policy deployment, standard work, visual management, CI)

Budget ownership for multi million dollar operations

Cross functional leadership with engineering, maintenance, quality, HR, and supply chain

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Operations Management, Industrial Technology, or related field

Advanced degree (MBA or technical master’s) preferred

Lean / Six Sigma certification strongly preferred

Safety & compliance knowledge (OSHA, EPA, ISO, IATF depending on industry)

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Strong understanding of manufacturing processes (assembly, plastic injection, painting, molding, etc.)

Production planning & scheduling

Maintenance coordination and reliability fundamentals

Quality systems expertise (ISO/IATF, audits, corrective actions)

Data driven decision making using KPIs, OEE, downtime analysis, scrap trends

Continuous improvement tools (Kaizen, 5S, SMED, root cause analysis)

Strategic thinking — ability to build long range plans and align the plant to business goals

Strong communication — clear, direct, consistent with all levels of the organization

Talent development — coaching, succession planning, upgrading capability

Accountability culture — sets expectations, measures performance, drives results

Problem solving — structured, fast, and fact based

Customer focus — ensures delivery, quality, and responsiveness

Change leadership — leads transformation, not just daily operations

PI74351d29feb2-31181-41753625

Full-Time