Manager Production

Position Overview:

The Production Manager is a key operational leader responsible for driving safety, efficiency, and continuous improvement across all areas of the manufacturing floor. This role combines strategic oversight with hands-on execution to ensure production goals are achieved while fostering a culture of safety, quality, accountability, and collaboration. The Production Manager leads cross-functional initiatives, optimizes planning and resource allocation, standardizes best practices, and implements waste-reduction strategies to support long-term operational excellence. Strong leadership, communication, project management, and problem-solving skills are essential to align daily operations with broader business objectives.

 

Key Responsibilities:

 

Safety & Compliance

• Enforce all health, safety, and environmental requirements across the production floor.
• Promote a strong safety culture by encouraging open communication, near-miss reporting, and recognition of safe behaviors.
• Develop, implement, and maintain site-specific safety programs, including lockout/tagout, PPE requirements, and emergency response procedures.
• Lead incident investigations, including root cause analysis, documentation of findings, and implementation of corrective and preventive actions.

 

Production Planning & Scheduling

• Evaluate equipment, labor, and facility capacity to ensure production goals are realistic and achievable, including planning for peak demand and maintenance downtime.
• Monitor raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods to maintain appropriate inventory levels and support efficient production flow.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to understand production requirements and translate them into effective schedules and execution plans.
• Allocate labor and material resources to meet production targets, quality expectations, and customer commitments.
• Work closely with sales, logistics, engineering, and quality to align production plans with business priorities and customer needs.

 

Continuous Improvement

• Identify and implement opportunities to optimize processes, improve efficiency, and reduce lead times.
• Apply Lean Manufacturing principles to eliminate non-value-added activities and improve workflow.
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives, including kaizen events and value stream mapping activities.
• Drive improvements in material flow, resource utilization, bottleneck reduction, and overall operational performance.

 

Collaboration & Communication

• Establish strong communication channels between production, procurement, logistics, engineering, and quality teams.
• Translate strategic goals into clear, actionable expectations for supervisors and frontline employees.
• Implement structured shift handover practices to improve continuity, issue escalation, and accountability.
• Create feedback mechanisms to gather frontline input and support engagement and continuous improvement.
• Lead communication during unplanned events such as equipment failures or safety incidents, ensuring timely updates and alignment across stakeholders.
• Promote employee engagement through regular meetings, team communication, and consistent reinforcement of company values.

 

Standard Work Development

• Develop and maintain standardized work procedures that improve consistency, safety, quality, and efficiency.
• Collaborate with operators, engineering, and quality teams to define and document best-known methods for critical tasks.
• Ensure standard work remains current by incorporating improvements identified through kaizen, safety reviews, and quality findings.

 

 

Waste Reduction

• Identify and implement strategies to reduce waste, including excess inventory, overproduction, material movement, and inefficiencies in process flow.
• Monitor key performance indicators to measure the impact of waste-reduction efforts.
• Partner with engineering to support design-for-manufacturability initiatives that simplify production and reduce waste at the source.

 

Project Management

• Lead cross-functional projects involving process improvements, equipment upgrades, and facility expansion efforts.
• Develop project plans, timelines, budgets, and resource requirements to ensure successful execution.
• Coordinate with engineering, maintenance, procurement, and external vendors to align project deliverables with operational needs.