Job Description

This Vice President of Operations will take over the production floor at a growing manufacturer and double what it can produce in the first year. Every unit is systematically configured to the customer’s order, combining manufacturing innovation with hand craftsmanship where it adds the most value.The seat reports to the President and comes with the backing to build the operation the business needs next.

The company is family-owned, with decades of craftsmanship behind it and a parent company that runs on a mature lean operating system. Lean daily management is already running, and the visual controls build-out is under way. The role reports to the President, who set the strategy and the growth plan. He wants an operating partner who owns the floor outright, sits on the leadership team, and grows into the strategic side of the company alongside him.

The job is to run manufacturing, planning, materials, warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment as one connected workflow. The team includes a Director of Logistics and Facilities, a Production Floor Superintendent, a Planner, and a Manufacturing Engineer, with room to add manufacturing leadership as the operation scales. The position also directs outsourced purchasing, which does not report to it. This leader is on the floor every day, leading through supervisors, and close enough to the work to see each product built, finished, and shipped to customers.

The Goal

In twelve months, the VP of Operations has stabilized the floor, doubled production capability across every value stream, cut lead time in half, and built the frontline bench that holds those gains without the VP standing over it.

Outcomes You'll Be Responsible For

• Stabilize the floor and prove the capacity: Take over day-to-day leadership, hold safety and quality as non-negotiable, and get to reliable current-state performance. Build on the leader standard work and lean daily management already running, expand them across the floor, and finish the visual controls build-out. From that base, roughly double daily output and take lead time from six weeks to three, order placed to order shipped. Stress-test the system so the capability holds regardless of bookings.
• Improve and redesign the production system: Carry the value-stream redesign forward inside the parent company's business system.. Every measure on the scorecard gets a target and an owner. Supply risks get made visible and covered by validated backup suppliers before a disruption. This leader finds the constraints ahead of growth and builds the capital case for the technology that removes them.
• Hire and develop the frontline leadership team: Build the supervisory bench through outside hires and promotion from within. Set the standard for how each cell is run, hold supervisors accountable in both directions, and coach them to solve problems, drive flow, and develop their people rather than do the work themselves. Every critical role gets a trained backup.

Skills Needed to Apply

• 10+ years in manufacturing operations and 5+ leading managers across multiple functions, as a VP of Operations, General Manager, Director of Operations, or Plant Manager with broad scope
• A path that runs through the frontline: supervisor to manager to operations leader, with each level built on the last
• A lean management system you built in an operation that did not have one: lean daily management, leader standard work, visual management, and structured problem-solving, installed through your own supervisors rather than consultants or a corporate improvement group
• A step-change you can state in numbers: throughput up, lead time down, on-time delivery up, in a growing manufacturer, and sustained after the push
• Supervisors you hired or promoted into a thin bench and coached until they solved problems without escalating to you

Nice to have

• Ownership of contribution margin and the material, labor, and overhead lines, with capital business cases that were approved
• Configure-to-order or high-mix production where each unit is finished to a customer-defined standard
• Ownership of planning, materials, warehousing, and fulfillment alongside manufacturing, with ERP/MRP visibility to demand, backlog, capacity, and inventory
• Time on a leadership team translating business strategy into capacity, technology, and capital priorities
• A bachelor’s degree in engineering, operations, supply chain, or business. Leaders who came up through operations without one are welcome.

Qualities

• Head coach: You build supervisors who run the work, and you stay out of the play unless the game calls for it.
• Holds the standard both ways: Good performance gets recognized. Missed standards get addressed. You make the hard people calls and command respect without needing to be liked.
• Fixes root causes: Problems get causes, countermeasures, owners, and due dates. You don't fight the same fire twice.
• Calm on the worst days: You work the system hardest when the floor is on fire, and you take pushback without taking it personally.
• Tells the truth about the numbers: Good or bad, you bring the lesson, the recovery plan, and the support you need.
• Respects the craft without romanticizing it: Quality is what the customer requires. Hand methods and historical build times are variables to engineer, not fixed facts.
• Adopts the system: You believe in running a proven operating system rather than bringing your own, and you still ask whether each process fits the work.