KION Group

Director of Customer Operational Readiness

KION Group  •  Banbury, GB (Onsite)  •  4 months ago
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Job Description

Are you ready to build a world class global function from the ground up? We’re looking for a visionary Director of Customer Operational Readiness to lead a new organisation dedicated to ensuring our customers are fully prepared to operate, sustain, and optimise their automated warehouse systems from day one.

These are large scale, high throughput, capital intensive automation environments — and you’ll be the strategic leader who ensures every customer achieves a smooth go live, a strong ramp up, and long term operational success.

We offer:

  • Career Development

  • Competitive Compensation And Benefits

  • Pay Transparency

  • Global Opportunities

Learn More Here:https://www.dematic.com/en-us/about/careers/what-we-offer/

Tasks and Qualifications:

What You’ll Lead:

Build and Lead a Global Readiness Organisation

  • Define the vision, strategy, and operating model for a new global function.

  • Recruit, develop, and lead regional readiness managers, operational consultants, training leaders, and transition specialists.

  • Establish global standards, governance, and repeatable frameworks for customer readiness.

Develop a Comprehensive Readiness Framework

  • Create a structured methodology covering organisational design, staffing, training, maintenance, safety, IT/controls readiness, data preparation, spare parts strategy, and operational governance.

  • Build maturity assessments, readiness scorecards, risk models, and tracking tools.

  • Ensure consistent deployment of best practices across global projects.

Engage Senior Customer Stakeholders

  • Work directly with C‑suite, VP, and Director‑level leaders to align readiness activities with their operating model and strategic goals.

  • Facilitate workshops, planning sessions, and executive reviews.

  • Act as the customer’s internal advocate, escalating risks and aligning resources.

Ensure Successful Go‑Live & Transition to Operations

  • Partner with Project Execution, Engineering, IT, and Commissioning teams to integrate readiness into project timelines.

  • Lead pre‑go‑live assessments and sign off on readiness criteria.

  • Ensure a seamless handover to Customer Service, Managed Services, and Lifecycle Support.

Align with Service & Support Organisations

  • Ensure service contracts, maintenance plans, spare parts strategies, SLAs, and KPIs match customer capabilities.

  • Confirm training, documentation, and support resources are in place before go‑live.

  • Support value‑added services such as remote monitoring and performance optimisation.

Drive Continuous Improvement

  • Capture lessons learned and feed them into product development, engineering standards, and service offerings.

  • Champion proactive risk identification and mitigation.

  • Build internal and customer‑facing knowledge bases to accelerate future ramp‑ups.

What You Bring:

Required Experience

  • 12+ years in warehouse automation, supply chain operations, logistics, manufacturing, or related engineering/operations fields.

  • Proven leadership experience building and scaling global or multi‑regional teams.

  • Expertise in operational readiness, commissioning, ramp‑up, customer success, or large‑scale transformation programmes.

  • Strong understanding of automated material handling systems, industrial controls, and WMS/WCS/WES software.

  • Executive presence with the ability to influence senior stakeholders.

  • Excellent strategic planning, risk management, and cross‑functional leadership skills.

  • Ability to travel globally (20–30%).

Preferred Experience

  • Background in solution integration, design‑for‑operations, or lifecycle service models.

  • Experience in consulting, Lean/6‑Sigma, or organisational change management.

  • Familiarity with multi‑year service contracts or outsourced operations models.

Success Looks Like

  • High customer readiness scores and reduced risk at each milestone.

  • Smooth go‑lives and ramp‑ups that meet throughput, availability, and SLA targets.

  • Fewer start‑up issues, escalations, and readiness‑related delays.

  • Seamless transition to service teams with minimal disruption.

  • Strong customer satisfaction, referenceability, and long‑term retention.

  • Adoption of readiness standards across global project teams.

Technical & Core Competencies

  • Deep expertise in warehouse automation and operational transition.

  • Skilled in readiness planning, risk assessment, and performance tracking.

  • Strong cross‑functional collaborator across engineering, PM, software, and service.

  • Executive‑level communication and influence.

  • Strategic, analytical, and structured problem‑solver.

  • Effective change leader who drives customer adoption and operational transformation.

D ematic is proud to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants. Dematic prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, religion or belief, age, sex, national or ethnic origin, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

KION Group

About KION Group

Are looking to make your move? Then you’ve come to the right place! We are the KION Group, and the world of supply chain solutions is our home. KION is shaping world trade – globally, regionally, locally. We ensure that supply chains reach their full potential: fast, efficient, smart, sustainable and reliable.

Our 42,000 employees make a real difference, helping us to become who we are today: The Supply Chain Solutions Company. Our people’s passion is innovating, automating, and orchestrating solutions for our customers’ supply chains.

Would you like to be part of our international team? We can offer you interesting jobs and exciting career opportunities in an innovative, rapidly-growing, and forward-looking industry.

With us, you benefit from numerous development opportunities in a global group, including the possibility of working at one of our locations abroad on a temporary basis. Regardless of which of our sites you work at, the KION values—integrity, collaboration, courage, and excellence—shape how we act and how we work with colleagues, managers, customers, suppliers, and applicants both at home and abroad.

KION is the architect of global, regional and local supply chains. Our brands are well established:

Dematic is the global leader in intelligent supply chain and automation solutions. The Linde Material Handling and STILL brands serve the premium and higher value segments of the industrial truck market. Baoli focuses on industrial trucks in the lower value and economy segments.

As a provider of comprehensive supply chain solutions with a worldwide service network, KION has a global presence and a regional focus on the needs of its customers. KION brands keep the world moving.

You can access our Legal Notice via the link https://www.kiongroup.com/en/Service/Legal-Notice/ and our Privacy Statement here: https://www.kiongroup.com/en/Service/Privacy-Statement/

Industry
Manufacturing & Production
Company Size
1,001-5,000 employees
Headquarters
Frankfurt/Main, DE
Year Founded
2006
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