Operational Excellence Lead

 

Work Location Type: Hybrid 

 

As a leading industrial distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom, We Keep The World Working® by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. With 2023 sales of $16.5 billion, we’re dedicated to providing value for customers, fostering an engaging culture for team members and driving strong financial results.

 

Our welcoming workplace enables you to learn, grow and make a difference by keeping businesses running and their people safe. As a 2024 Glassdoor Best Place to Work and a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company, we’re looking for passionate people to join our team as we continue leading the industry over our next 100 years.

 

 

Position Details: 

The Customer Review Operational Excellence team coordinates activities and resources across all participating departments, ensures deliverables are completed on time, sets and tracks operational metrics, identifies and manages continuous improvement initiatives. As an Operational Excellence Lead, you will lead strategic initiatives to develop new operating models and continuously improving existing operating models to deliver more value to customers and eliminate non-value-added activities. This includes working to set up/iterate standard process and the workflow management tools that track the work. This department also provides tracking and meaningful insights into the progress of work. You will oversee the project tools that manage Customer Review work, and the workflows that route the work from one department to the next.

 

You will report to the Manager, Customer Review Operational Excellence. 

 

This is a hybrid position based onsite 3 days a week in Lake Forest or Chicago, IL.

 

You will:  

• Be a workflow process and tools owner (e.g. SmartSheet) including an advanced training resource for these tools 

• Maintain knowledge of the Customer Review process and team historical information 

• Maintain documentation of current processes for internal and cross-departmental use 

• May lead, develop and standardize additional workflows 

• Determine if feedback or Customer Review plan work needs to be escalated 

• Develop baselines for metrics and assist teams in identifying goals and action plans to improve metrics 

• Create and own reporting as operational metrics are identified, primarily related to the Customer Review process or relevant related work cross-departmentally  

• Work with partners, subject matter experts, and different levels of leaders across the organization to advance project and continuous improvement goals 

• Test new and better ways to solve problems using relevant Continuous Improvement/Lean tools and principles 

• Prioritize work, guide targeted progress, anticipate and remove barriers, and communicate clear project status to multiple levels 

• Use analytics and judgment to identify, prioritize and solve complex business problems with clear and concise recommendations to leadership considering upstream and downstream impacts, risks and data backed evidence 

 

You Have: 

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience 

• 3+ years of experience in continuous improvement and project management (especially of large-scale, cross-departmental projects), internal consulting, or related experience 

• Experience analyzing and using data to determine insights, make data driven decisions, and influence partners and teams 

• Direct or indirect leadership experience 

• Experience creating reports for baseline metrics using reporting tools, such as Power BI 

• Str