Senior Director, NGS Lean Transformation - Operations in Stockport

Build a career powered by innovations that matter! At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible. We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Summary

The NGS Lean Transformation – Operations is responsible for developing, deploying and leading the Lean cultural transformation in Operations. The deployment of the Lean-Operations cultural transformation is one of the most important pillars of the Novanta Growth System transformation plan. This person will develop a clear Lean roadmap starting with lean conversion of production cells, rapidly deploying 5S and Standard Work while driving tiered Daily Management from the production cells to the Operations Management team level. The person will enhance the culture through long-term improvements to teams and process delivering performance improvements for employees, customers and shareholders.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lean Strategic Direction Setting: Develop the strategy for Lean cultural transformation within operations.
• Lean System Conversion: Partner with the business operations leadership teams to manage a kaizen and training calendar to rapidly convert production teams and processes to a Lean operating system.
• Tiered Daily Management and 5S Coaching: Design, collaboratively implement and coach a tiered Daily Management system that is visual to ensure rapid detection, tracking and resolution of operations abnormalities across the management tiers. Effectively leverage Kata coaching and root cause analysis to drive effective resolution.
• KPI Leadership: Design, collaboratively implement and track Enterprise, Function, Region and Site level KPI’s. Coach the leaders to build in stretch and solve for the ‘Red’s” by equipping them with the different forms of problem solving.
• Improvement and Innovation Leadership: Actively seek, evaluate and lead process improvements, technology upgrades and best practice method deployments like AI to match organizational needs to improvements and to achieve expected results.
• Build Cohesive Teams: Foster Lean value stream thinking by all operations leaders and teams to build cohesive teams and sustain operations improvement initiatives.
• Lean Skill Mastery: Enhance employee engagement and growth through the implementation of goals, objectives and development plans supported by Lean benchmarking, skill mastery pathways and targeted experiences.
• Best Practice Sharing: Identify and share operations best practices across the different regions, sites and operations departments.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or similar technical field; master’s degree is desirable.
• A Lean expert with a minimum of ten or more years of experience in process improvement, with at least five years coaching and leading shop floor lean transformation teams.
• A deep knowledge of and hands-on experience training and implementing TPS-based operating system using Lean tools is required.
• An operations leader with a minimum of five or more years of experience in direct management of manufacturing or supply chain functions showing demonstrated year over year improvements using Lean within a complex manufacturing environment.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment, actively listening, facilitating, challenging, communicating, and motivating multifunctional teams and employees at all levels of the organization.
• Strong drive for operational excellence and business results, with the ability to interact effectively at all organizational levels.
• Able to work independently across multiple countries and cultures.

Travel Requirements

Travel to Novanta locations, up to 50% across Europe and eastern USA. Occasional global travel for NGS forums or global project alignment.

Physical Requirements

• Mobility to work in a standard office and manufacturing setting and to use standard office equipment, including a computer.
• Ability to use vision to read computer screen and read printed materials.

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Solving complex challenges, delivering innovations that matter! is a leading global supplier of core technology solutions that give medical, life science, and advanced industrial original equipment manufacturers a competitive advantage. We combine deep proprietary expertise and competencies in precision medicine, precision manufacturing, robotics and automation, and advanced surgery with a proven ability to solve complex technical challenges. This enables Novanta to engineer proprietary technology solutions that deliver extreme precision and performance, tailored to our customers' demanding applications. The driving force behind our growth is the team of innovative professionals who share a commitment to innovation, the Novanta Growth System, and our customers’ success.