Senior Director, NGS Operations Excellence

Build a career powered by innovations that matter!  At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible.  We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Looking for a great place to work?  You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment.  Come explore Novanta.

Summary

The NGS OPEX Transformation – Operations role is responsible for deploying, leading and sustaining the OPEX cultural transformation in Operations. This work is a core pillar of the Novanta Growth System. The role holder will develop a clear OPEX roadmap starting with implementation of tiered Daily Management from the production cells up to the Business unit leadership team, followed by material flow conversion and rapid deployment of 5S and Standard Work. The role strengthens the culture through long-term improvements to teams and processes, delivering performance gains for all stakeholders.

Primary Responsibilities

• OPEX Strategic Direction Setting. Develop the strategy for OPEX cultural transformation within operations.
• Operating System Conversion. Partner with operations leadership to manage an improvement and training calendar that supports rapid conversion of production teams and processes to a unified operating system.
• Tiered Daily Management and Problem-Solving Coaching. Design, implement and coach a visual tiered Daily Management system enabling fast detection, tracking and resolution of abnormalities. Use Kata coaching and root cause analysis to drive effective problem solving.
• KPI Leadership. Design, implement and track Enterprise, Function, Region and Site KPIs. Coach leaders to set stretch targets and address performance gaps using structured problem solving.
• Improvement and Innovation Leadership. Identify, evaluate and lead process improvements, technology upgrades and best practice deployments, including relevant AI applications, to meet organizational needs and achieve expected outcomes.
• Build High Performing Teams. Promote value stream thinking across operations leaders and teams to support high performance working team and sustain improvements.
• OPEX Skill Mastery. Strengthen employee engagement and development through clear goals, benchmarking, skill mastery pathways and targeted learning experiences.
• Best Practice Sharing. Identify and share operations best practices across regions, sites and operations functions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or a similar technical field, master’s degree preferred.
• OPEX expertise with ten or more years of process improvement experience, including at least five years coaching and leading shop floor transformation teams.
• Deep knowledge of and hands-on experience training and implementing TPS-based operating systems using Lean-OPEX tools.
• Desirable experience: working in an operational leadership role directly managing manufacturing or supply chain functions, with proven year-over-year improvements within a complex manufacturing environment. 
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment, actively listening, facilitating, challenging, communicating and motivating teams at all levels.
• Strong focus on problem solving to drive business results, with the ability to interact effectively across the organization.
• Ability to work independently across multiple countries and cultures.

Travel Requirements

• Travel to Novanta locations, up to 60% in Europe.  Occasional global travel for NGS forums or global project alignment.

Physical Requirements          

• Mobility to work in a standard office and manufacturing setting and to use standard office equipment, including a computer.
• Ability to use vison to read computer screen and read printed materials.

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Please call +1 781-266-5700 if you need a disability accommodation for any part of the employment process.