Job Description

Today, Lonza is a global leader in life sciences operating across three continents. While we work in science, there is no magic formula to how we do it. Our greatest scientific solution is talented people working together, devising ideas that help businesses to help people. In exchange, we let our people own their careers. Their ideas, big and small, genuinely improve the world. And that is the kind of work we want to be part of.

The Head of OE & PMO leads the Operational Excellence and PMO agenda, driving business results aligned with the Dedicated to Excellence strategy. The role leads and develops a team of OE Business Partners and OE/PMO Managers, coaches the Mammalian Operations leadership team, and embeds Lean Six Sigma principles to sustain a culture of continuous improvement. Responsible for Hoshin planning, X‑Matrix deployment, Project Portfolio Management (PPM), and PMO governance, the role translates strategy into actionable operational excellence and innovation projects across functions to deliver sustainable performance improvement.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the OE & PMO strategy and PMO governance for Mammalian Operations Visp
• Define OE & PMO strategy for Mammalian Operations Visp, establish continuous improvement goals
• PMO governance for Tier 3 and 4 levels, supporting all LT topics
• Drive implementation of Lonza operational excellence roadmap, assessing progress and defining actions
• Align and prioritize innovation initiatives, and projects, ensuring synergies of local improvements with wider transformational objectives
• Managing a team of OE and PMO Managers on day-to-day basis
• Leading multidisciplinary execution teams
• Work with functional leaders to establish continuous improvement goals & act as a liaison with finance to build improvement budgets & validate actual improvement ROI results
• Review, report & improve metrics by implementing tracking systems for monitoring
• Work with the team to uncover and assess lean opportunities; helping to prioritize those projects with greatest benefit and support delivery with well executed sustainable steps
• Strengthen collaboration and best‑practice exchange within the global and local PMO & OE community across sites and within Visp
• Sustaining a culture for a successful, high-performance team. Maintains a culture of empowerment and innovation, trust, high performance and change readiness
• Mentor, coach or train team members including green belts in Lean / Lean Six Sigma methodologies
• Lead and facilitate improvement/problem solving workshops
• Performing other duties as assigned

Requirements:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Process Engineering, Pharmaceutical Technology, Engineering or equivalent
• Experience: 10 + years in Biologics GMP manufacturing with operational experience
• Leadership Skills: Demonstrated ability to lead teams, get results, and promote collaboration across departments
• Language Skills: Proficient in English (required); German proficiency is a plus

Every day, Lonza’s products and services have a positive impact on millions of people. For us, this is not only a great privilege, but also a great responsibility. How we achieve our business results is just as important as the achievements themselves. At Lonza, we respect and protect our people and our environment. Any success we achieve is no success at all if not achieved ethically.

People come to Lonza for the challenge and creativity of solving complex problems and developing new ideas in life sciences. In return, we offer the satisfaction that comes with improving lives all around the world. The satisfaction that comes with making a meaningful difference.