Director, Continuous Improvement

Founded in 2013, Home Chef is the leading meal solutions company with both a retail and online presence. Available online at homechef.com and in retail at more than 2,100 Kroger grocery stores, Home Chef is committed to inspiring and enabling more people to cook simple, delicious meals, no matter how busy they are.

In 2023, Home Chef introduced a new brand, Tempo! Tempo features a rotating selection of ready-to-heat meals delivered directly to your door. These meals are better-for-you versions of familiar favorites, designed to save you time and reduce stress while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Our Tempo menu includes options that are protein-packed, fiber-rich, calorie and carb conscious, keto-friendly, and dietitian-approved.

Similar to our recipes, we recognize that variety is the spice of life, and therefore, our employees also bring their uniqueness and color to our fantastic team. We’re eager to work with humble team players and pragmatic next-level thinkers to innovate on Home Chef’s offerings.

The Head of Continuous Improvement (CI) will develop and implement a uniform Home Chef approach to Continuous Improvement throughout operations. Responsibilities include maintaining and supporting the excellence program with routine site visits and audits, KPI treatment support, and completing process improvement projects across the network. The CI Director will also oversee Home Chef’s training program - developing, maintaining, and continuously improving training materials for all roles and critical tasks within the fulfillment centers.

Detailed Responsibilities

Lead the CI Team:

• Develop routine meeting cadence with corporate and local CI teams to review performance metrics and coordinated actions to address
• Provide oversight into Kaizen scheduling and progress
• Develop CI Toolkit for standardized approach to problem solving and treatment
• Develops best practice process for evaluating and sharing best practices between sites
• Act as the effective leader of cross functional teams to support site and corporate initiatives for process improvement
• Develop repository and standard for SOPs, visual boards, and toolkits

Lead the Home Chef excellence program for process and problem solving routine:

• Maintain the Excellence playbook to provide standards of documentation, process adherence, KPI measurement and treatment, routine review, and tools for excellence.
• Conduct on-site audits of each pillar of excellence and adherence to standards
• Develop expectations for growth through excellence and drive site performance through standardization

Lead Home Chef projects to drive process and performance improvement:

• Maintain a pipeline of continuous improvement projects to be executed by yourself, your team of project managers or site CI managers.
• Work cross-functionally to develop stakeholder engagement and deliver on projects across all business units.
• Align Home Chef CI project focus with business priorities and ensure continuity across levels and the corporate to plant relationship.

Lead the Home Chef Training Department:

• Develop new hire training materials for each role and critical task within the fulfillment process 
• Provide on-site training support 
• Develop and maintain refresher training and partner with site Training Superintendents to meet monthly refresher training targets
• Own the new hire training program, driving regular on-site audits in order to improve new hire training experience
• Responsible for the Home Chef leadership training program for frontline supervisors and managers, as well as, lead development to build standards for leadership across Home Chef.

Lead the Plant Impact Program:

• Aid plant and corporate teams in scoping out new initiatives to support rolling out new product lines, increasing capacity and complexity
• Builds and maintains roadmap for new initiatives being rolled out to the site from corporate business partners
• Act as the liaison between Product and the Operations team - providing insight on new product feasibility, coordinating trials when necessary, providing feedback on operational challenges created by product mix

This position requires 25-50% travel. 

Qualifications

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability needed for this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities.

• Minimum of 3 years of successful managerial l