About This Role
This role focuses on driving continuous improvement and operational excellence within a manufacturing environment. The Continuous Improvement Manager will develop and implement lean operating systems, lead improvement initiatives, and build CI capabilities across the organization, ensuring alignment with business priorities and financial accountability.
Responsibilities
- Own the site continuous-improvement roadmap; align the improvement pipeline to business priorities through strategy deployment and annual/quarterly planning with the leadership team
- Design, deploy, and sustain the lean operating system: tiered daily management, visual management, standard work, leader standard work, and gemba routines
- Define and maintain the plant KPI framework (safety, quality, delivery, cost, throughput, on-time delivery, first-pass yield, cost of poor quality) and ensure metrics drive action at every tier
- Plan, facilitate, and follow up on kaizen events, value-stream mapping, and rapid improvement workshops across the busbar value stream and supporting functions
- Lead structured problem-solving (DMAIC, A3, 8D) on the site’s highest-impact losses; focus early effort on the binding constraints to flow
- Drive HMLV-appropriate flow improvements: setup and changeover reduction (SMED), WIP and queue-time reduction, cell design, pull/replenishment, and scheduling discipline
- Use Epicor labor, move, and job data to quantify active-vs-queue time, identify waste, and validate that improvements hold
- Extend lean practices beyond production into quoting, order entry, planning, purchasing, and quality processes (transactional lean)
- Build business cases for improvement initiatives; track and report validated hard and soft savings in partnership with Finance
- Partner with Engineering on capital, automation, and MES/analytics projects to ensure they solve the right problems and deliver expected returns
- Build CI capability across the organization: deliver lean and problem-solving training
- Coach supervisors and managers to lead improvement in their own areas; foster an engaged culture where operators identify and solve problems
- Integrate CI with AS9100 and NADCAP requirements; ensure process changes are properly controlled, documented, and validated, and support audits and corrective actions
- Lead 5S and workplace organization; partner with EHS to embed safety and ergonomics into improvement work
Requirements
- Applicants must qualify as a “U.S. Person” under ITAR (22 CFR § 120.62), meaning a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or other qualifying protected individual
- Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Operations Management, or a closely related discipline