HEAD OF MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS

Key experience and skills

· Experience working in fast paced manufacturing environments with a blend of regular, repeating and infrequent products.

· Familiarity with production planning software and experience in planning production schedules.

· Experience of leading substantial production teams, driving performance and behaviours, and managing challenging situations.

· Demonstrated experience of personally leading continuous improvement activities using a variety of tools and techniques.

· Experience working with Advanced Product Quality Planning and Production Part Approval tools.

· Experience and proven understanding of business management systems aligned to international standards ISO9001, IATF16949, ISO14001, ISO45001 etc.

· Relevant manufacturing/engineering degree is preferred, or HND, BTec, Professional Level 5 Award or equivalent NVQ Level 5 qualifications.

· Some experience working on the shopfloor in a manufacturing environment would be an advantage.

· Strong numeracy, literacy and communication skills with robust capability on document, presentation and spreadsheet software.

· Proven ability to interact effectively and appropriately with shopfloor teams.

Personal attributes

· Proactively contribute to creating a good team atmosphere.

· Takes ownership for team cohesion and team development.

· Makes useful links to arrive at insightful plans and solutions

· Has an Adult:Adult, collaborative approach to others.

· A self\-starter, motivated and able to positively motivate others.

· Focused, target driven with a positive, can\-do attitude.

· Embraces personal challenge.

· Self\-aware.

· Resilient, optimistic and open to change.

Overview of responsibilities

· Provide best practice exemplar representation of the company values and behaviours alongside the processes defined in the human resources manual.

· Lead the mid\-term capacity planning process to ensure that equipment and workforce resources can deliver the forecast customer demand requirements.

· Lead the introduction of new products in line with industry standard requirements.

· Lead the introduction of new equipment to meet capacity and future business strategy needs.

· Coordinate export control processes for international shipments to ensure there are no delays or process failures.

· Detailed production planning to ensure that contracted client requirements are delivered on time within the available equipment and workforce resource constraints.

· Management of the production team aligned to business human resource procedures.

· Daily management of production to ensure the planned schedule is achieved and recovery action taken where needed.

· Ensuring a safe working environment is maintained, safe practices are followed and production process standards adhered to.

· Ownership and coordination of the production focussed continuous improvement process to drive performance improvement in line with the business strategy.

Detailed Responsibilities

Mid\-term capacity planning

· Develop mid\-term capacity requirement forecasts based on commercial team inputs to identify workforce and equipment capacity constraints. Propose solutions to resolve any constraints that may impact delivery and bottlenecks impacting efficiency.

· Identify future equipment requirements to deliver the forecast capacity requirement and business strategy.

· Identify workforce requirements and support HR in the recruitment process. Lead and manage the workforce skills development planning process.

New product and equipment introduction

· Lead the introduction of new products through the Advanced Product Quality Planning process, aligned to the requirements of the appropriate industry standards, to ensure that they are proven to deliver the quality and rate requirements. Ensure product introduction is managed within the process scheduling process with sufficient capacity reserved.

· Coordinate new equipment selection with the Managing Director and lead equipment introduction to ensure vertical, sustained, ramp up at best cost.

· Make recommendations and work with the Managing Director where new equipment investment or process change will drive step\-change performance improvement.

Production planning

· Plan the monthly workload to ensure orders are delivered on time in the most efficient manner aligned to defined manufacturing processes within the available equipment and resource capacity.

· As part of planning, identify and manage equipment and labour constraints within the month, including requirements for early production to smooth workload.

· Allocate production staff to process areas at the start of the month to meet production requirements and identify spare workforce capacity.

· Ensure the production plan takes account of planned maintenance requirements, workforce pre\-booked holidays, courses and key skills development requirements.

· Identify and justify any overtime requirements, escalate appropriately where any temporary labour is required to meet demand or where orders may be delayed.

· Work with the commercial team to review order requests received during the month ensuring that they can be integrated within the production plan and that achievable delivery promise dates are provided.

· Work with the Managing Director and commercial team to prioritise workload where overloads cannot be managed ensuring impacted customers are informed in a timely manner.

Production team management

· Manage opportunities to increase production staff skills and flexibility, aligned to the longer term skills development plan, ensuring that opportunities are fairly allocated.

· Manage the production team and their behaviours in line with the human resources manual.

· Manage holiday and absence booking in line with the human resources manual, ensuring that approvals can be managed without negatively impacting delivery to customers.

· Manage the production workforce allocation on a daily basis where there are unauthorised absences.

· Provide the first level performance review and behaviours disciplinary process as documented in the Human Resources manual and agreed with the HR Director.

· Lead annual review appraisals of the production staff to drive best practice performance and behaviours, managing causes of non\-performance. Identify personal development aspirations, development requirements and set objectives for the next year. Conduct a minimum one interim review of progress during the year.

Daily management

· Conduct a bi\-daily review, supported by appropriate visual management, with key team member representatives from each production area. Ensure the production performance situation is clearly identified, any concerns are raised and managed effectively, and that key information (e.g. material arrival dates, site visits etc) is communicated.

· Ensure the staff in each work area understand their production targets at the start of each shift, either through key team member representatives or individually.

· Coordinate day to day workforce rotation to ensure that team members retain and refresh their skill sets and avoid boredom / complacency risks.

· Review progress at the end of each shift and update the production plan to understand where work is progressing ahead or behind schedule. Implement appropriate actions to recover the production schedule and ensure customer delivery requirements are met.

· Ensure that all processes are being completed safely, in line with defined processes and achieving the target quality outcomes. Where gaps are identified take immediate action to protect the worker, customer and equipment.

· Ensure that the working environment is maintained in the best condition to safely manufacture products and protect quality.

· Liaise with the Quality Manager to understand and capture causes of any defect parts, identifying the basic root cause and ensuring actions are implemented to protect the customer.

· Ensure that actual production times are documented and where any major gaps are identified the cause is understood to ensure that the correct process has been followed and that there is no associated safety or product quality risks.

Continuous Improvement

· Review and communicate to the production team, on a monthly basis, the Safety, Quality, Cost and Delivery performance together with improvement opportunities identified to close gaps.

· Establish small improvement teams and lead continuous improvement activities ensuring all impacted functions are represented and using the appropriate Lean tools.

· Drive month to month workplace organisation improvement through techniques such as 5S, including area audits.

· Ensure that standard times within the business data management systems accurately reflect the actual time taken by a skilled worker.

· Work with the Maintenance Engineer to drive best practice productive maintenance process to target zero breakdowns at optimum cost.

Pay: £42,000\.00\-£46,000\.00 per year

Work Location: In person

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