Manager, Operations

Job Summary

As part of a $60M+ manufacturer of surgical solutions for the Medical industry, the Operations Manager is responsible for directing and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the factory delivering leadership level performance in regards to safety, quality, delivery, and cost to our customers and the business.  Demonstrating strong positive leadership, this role utilizes the Nordson Business System, NBS Next, to deliver a higher service level to our customers and additional capacity for our factory through cellular manufacturing creating flow & efficiency.  A successful Operations Manager drives results around customer expectations, through a sense of urgency throughout the Operations team, while proactively pursuing continuous improvement opportunities in production and distribution environments.  The Operations Manager is quick to recognize nonconformities to implement countermeasures to issues that might prevent meeting or exceeding performance goals.

Essential Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Manages the overall activities of Operations team and production and warehouse teams by driving engagement in safety vision, Journey to Zero, to prevent incidents through focus on unsafe behaviors and conditions.
• Manages resource utilization to assure timely production and quality standards are achieved daily. Coordinates the creation and maintenance of appropriate levels of manufacturing capacity while controlling labor and overhead costs.
• Implement and sustain visual factory for metrics tracking and improvement opportunity identification in production and warehouse areas.
• Demonstrates strong talent management ability focusing on hiring, coaching, directing, and developing employees while increasing engagement.
• Manages manufacturing and operational excellence personnel in developing and implementing process improvements, production safety features and cost reduction concepts, while simultaneously providing production and engineering support.
• Leads efforts in key focus areas including production and cost efficiencies, safety, reliability, team member engagement, to achieve or exceed targeted performance. 
• Plans, designs, prioritize and implements initiatives that result in continuous improvement of customer satisfaction, manufacturing efficiency, and profitability.
• Creates a culture of continuous improvement by meeting with the team regularly to reflect on concerns and challenges to action plan solutions.
• Facilitates P&L support by collaborating with direct reports and site Director of Operations on budget planning, capital expenditures, cost analysis opportunities, and manufacturing productivity for assigned customer product lines.
• Able to quickly identify and correct flow issues within a manufacturing site.  Comfortable with leading continuous improvement projects and rapid improvement events resulting in through-put improvements, shorter lead times, cost reductions and productivity gains across all assembly product lines.
• Promotes owner mindset and employee empowerment by ensuring that standardized work processes are established, followed, countermeasures are implemented, and compliance with safety requirements are met.
• Instills and maintains a positive can-do team atmosphere through effective what and why leadership practices.
• Results oriented, approach focused on developing and building high performance teams.
• High level of passion and enthusiasm to lead customer centric service manufacturing team.
• Forward thinking – identifies and anticipates issues and brings others along to proactively address.
• Perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Education and Experience Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Technology, Business, Engineering or other related field required.
• 7+ years of professional experience in a manufacturing or operations leadership role is required.
• Proficiency in all MS Office applications.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Black Belt is preferred.
• Experience with an ERP platform strongly preferred.  JDE experience a plus.
• Experience with medical device manufacturing is preferred.
• Experience operating in an FDA or other regulated environment is a plus.

Required Skills and Abilities

• Remains calm under pressure; Strong decision-making skills in response to high pressure situations.
• Proven change agent: skill with enabling change, strong influencing abilities particularly with frontline teams.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and ability to interact with individuals at all levels of the organization.
• Proven ability to implement process management, value stream execution, and continuous improvement activities.
• Demonstrated results with Kanban processes and implementation strategies
• Delivers a talent strategy that builds winning teams through a focus on empathy, integrity, inclusion, learning, and collaboration 
• Promotes a culture consistent with Nordson values and Foundational Attributes 
• Coaches for development and manages performance and behavior concerns in a timely manner