Position Responsibilities
- Leads end-to-end vehicle production operations across multiple manufacturing locations, ensuring safe, efficient, compliant, and scalable execution of all upfit production activities including body, paint, assembly, quality inspection, rework, and final release.
- Owns daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly production performance across all assigned facilities, ensuring operational output meets forecasted production plans, customer commitments, OEM requirements, and company financial objectives.
- Directs production scheduling, capacity planning, labor deployment, and operational resource allocation to optimize throughput, minimize downtime, and maintain predictable production flow across multiple sites.
- Drives operational excellence through lean manufacturing principles, standard work, takt-based production flow, waste elimination, bottleneck reduction, and continuous process improvement initiatives to improve efficiency, quality, and cost performance.
- Oversees vehicle chassis flow, inventory movement, material readiness, and production sequencing to ensure uninterrupted manufacturing operations, balanced line flow, and efficient conversion of inbound chassis into completed upfit vehicles.
- Partners closely with supply chain, logistics, purchasing, and planning teams to ensure inventory availability, supplier performance, inbound material timing, and transportation execution align with production schedules and delivery objectives.
- Establishes and manages key operational performance indicators (KPIs) including throughput, labor efficiency, first‑time quality, rework, on‑time delivery, schedule attainment, inventory turns, chassis aging, downtime, and production cost performance.
- Provides strong production leadership across multi‑site manufacturing teams, developing managers and supervisors while driving accountability, urgency, operational discipline, and consistent execution against defined production standards.
- Leads production readiness planning for monthly and quarterly volume objectives, ensuring labor, capacity, equipment, materials, and support functions are aligned to meet operational commitments without compromising quality or safety.
- Drives a culture of quality ownership throughout production operations, ensuring defects are rapidly identified, escalated, root‑caused, and permanently corrected to reduce rework, warranty exposure, and customer quality risk.
- Oversees operational coordination between production, paint, quality, engineering, logistics, and supply chain teams to maintain synchronized execution, remove constraints, and ensure efficient end‑to‑end manufacturing flow.
- Monitors and manages production input/output performance, ensuring inbound chassis, materials, labor availability, and operational capacity align with required production output and shipment commitments.
- Supports capital planning and manufacturing infrastructure improvements, including equipment, tooling, facility layout, and automation investments that improve throughput, safety, quality, and long‑term production scalability.
- Maintains strict compliance with OEM production standards, internal operating procedures, regulatory requirements, audit readiness expectations, and controlled process documentation across all production locations.
- Leads problem‑solving and operational recovery efforts when production disruptions occur, rapidly addressing labor shortages, material constraints, quality issues, equipment downtime, or logistics disruptions to protect production commitments.
- Drives cross‑site operational consistency through standardized processes, shared best practices, performance visibility, and leadership alignment to ensure consistent execution and results across all manufacturing locations.
Skills, Qualifications & Core Competencies
- Proven manufacturing leadership experience leading multi‑site production operations in high‑volume, high‑mix automotive, manufacturing, or vehicle upfit environments, delivering results across safety, quality, cost, and delivery.
- Strong leadership capability with a demonstrated ability to build, develop, and lead high‑performing teams across multiple locations, driving accountability, operational discipline, and execution consistency.
- Proven ability to lead cross‑functional teams across production, quality, supply chain, logistics, planning, maintenance, and engineering to achieve production targets and operational objectives.
- Execution‑focused leader with strong decision‑making and problem‑solving skills, capable of rapidly resolving production constraints, quality issues, supplier disruptions, labor challenges, and operational bottlenecks.
- Demonstrated experience in production scheduling, capacity planning, labor deployment, inventory flow, chassis management, and operational resource alignment to support efficient production flow and on‑time delivery.
- Strong analytical and KPI‑driven leadership approach, utilizing production, quality, labor, cost, and delivery metrics to drive accountability, continuous improvement, and operational performance.
- Working knowledge of lean manufacturing, standard work, waste reduction, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement principles within complex production environments.
- Effective communicator and organizational leader capable of aligning frontline teams, site leadership, and executive stakeholders around priorities, performance expectations, and business objectives.
- Results‑oriented leader with a demonstrated ability to consistently deliver monthly and quarterly operational commitments through disciplined execution and strong team leadership.
Education & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations, Business, Supply Chain, or a related field preferred; equivalent combination of education, technical training, and relevant production leadership experience will be considered.
- Minimum of 8–12 years of progressive manufacturing or automotive production leadership experience, with demonstrated responsibility for production teams, operational performance, scheduling, quality, and delivery execution.
- Proven experience leading multi‑site production operations within high‑volume, high‑mix manufacturing, automotive, or vehicle upfit environments preferred.