Position Description:
The Senior Vice President, Manufacturing is an executive leadership role responsible for the strategic direction, oversight, and continuous improvement of all manufacturing operations across the organization. The role has end-to-end accountability for the safety, quality, cost, delivery, inventory, and people performance of all manufacturing sites.
Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer and serving as a member of the executive team, the SVP leads both traditional and advanced manufacturing capabilities—including automation, robotics integration, and intelligent manufacturing systems—while ensuring operational excellence, cost competitiveness, and world-class quality. The SVP partners with executive leadership to align manufacturing strategy with overall business objectives and drives a culture of safety, accountability, lean manufacturing and innovation throughout the organization.
The ideal candidate is an experienced multi-plant manufacturing executive who understands material handling, conveyance, or comparable engineered-to-order discrete manufacturing and can translate strategy into day-to-day operating discipline across multiple geographies and shifts.
Duties/ Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership & Multi-Plant Management
- Define and execute the long-range manufacturing strategy across all plant locations, aligning capacity, capability, cost structure, and capital with long-term growth objectives.
- Provide executive oversight for all manufacturing plants, ensuring consistent performance standards, operating procedures, and cultural alignment across sites.
- Lead site P&L accountability across facilities, setting and delivering targets for revenue contribution, cost of goods, and capital efficiency.
- Build and sustain a high-performance leadership team of plant managers and functional directors, fostering professional growth and succession planning.
- Partner with the COO and executive team to translate corporate strategy into site-level operating plans, capital plans, and cost reduction commitments.
Multi-Plant Operational Performance
- Own end-to-end accountability for safety, quality, delivery performance, cost, inventory, and productivity across all manufacturing sites Set and monitor common KPIs for safety, quality, delivery, cost, inventory, and morale (SQDCIM) across all plants, driving rigorous accountability at each level.
- Establish and enforce common production planning, scheduling, materials, and execution standards across all plants.
- Drive daily operating discipline—gemba walks, tiered huddles, abnormality response, and structured problem solving—and ensure each plant manager runs a credible management operating system.
- Lead the manufacturing S&OP / SIOP cycle, owning the supply response to demand and ensuring plant-level executability.
- Direct capacity planning and production scheduling to meet customer demand while optimizing resource utilization and minimizing cost.
Advanced Manufacturing & Technology
- Lead the development and execution of advanced manufacturing initiatives including automation, robotics, IoT-enabled production systems, predictive maintenance, and digital twin technologies.
- Oversee adoption of Industry 4.0 principles—connected factories, real-time OEE monitoring, and data-driven process optimization.
- Partner with Engineering to evaluate and deploy emerging manufacturing technologies; establish a roadmap for ongoing capability advancement.
- Drive standardization of manufacturing platforms and processes across plants to maximize efficiency, scalability, and knowledge transfer.
- Develop, Identify and protect key intellectual property related to manufacturing processes, tooling, and automation systems.
Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement
- Champion Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement methodologies across all manufacturing sites; establish enterprise-wide CI programs and governance.
- Drive standard work, value stream design, OEE improvement, changeover reduction, and waste elimination as a daily operating habit, not a one-time project.
- Sponsor automation and robotics investments where they deliver durable safety, cost, throughput, or quality gains.
- Champion vertical integration decisions (fabrication, paint, sub-assembly) based on disciplined make/buy and total-cost analysis.
Safety, Quality & Compliance
- Champion a zero-harm safety culture across all sites; own the safety performance of every site and the implementation of leading-indicator programs.
- Ensure compliance with OSHA, all applicable federal, state, and local labor and EHS regulations across U.S. and international sites, customer quality requirements, and applicable industry standards.
- Ensure robust quality management systems are in place across all facilities; drive reduction in defect rates, warranty claims, and customer escapes.
- Lead root cause analysis and corrective action processes for significant quality, safety, or delivery failures.
- Partner with Quality, EHS, and Legal on incident response, corrective action, and audit readiness
Talent, Organization & Culture
- Build, develop, and retain the multi-plant manufacturing leadership team—plant managers, manufacturing engineering leaders, materials and planning leaders, and front-line supervisors.
- Define organization structure and spans / layers across sites; establish succession plans for critical roles.
- Partner with HR on workforce planning, organizational design, talent acquisition, and employee development programs.
- Lead positive employee relations activities across both union and non-union workforces.
Systems, Data & ERP
- Sponsor the manufacturing footprint of company’s ERP and shop-floor systems.
- Ensure data integrity across BOMs, routings, standard costs, inventory, and production reporting; hold sites accountable to a single source of truth.
Financial Accountability
- Own the manufacturing operating budget and the capital plan across the network; deliver against committed cost, productivity, and on-time delivery targets.
- Collaborate with the CFO and finance teams on budget development, capital planning, and financial performance reporting.
- Partner with Finance on standard costing, variance analysis, transfer pricing, and the financial dimensions of make/buy, transfer, and consolidation decisions.
- Provide accurate, timely manufacturing input into the company’s forecasting, board, and lender reporting processes.
Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Management
- Serve as the primary manufacturing executive interface with Sales, Engineering, Project Engineering, Project Management, Customer Experience, Sourcing, and Logistics to ensure customer commitments are met.
- Represent manufacturing operations to the Board of Directors, the private equity sponsor, investors, and key customers as required.
- Lead the manufacturing voice in major commercial reviews, capacity commitments, and customer escalations.
- Facilitate knowledge sharing, best practice transfer, and benchmarking across plants and within the industry.
Required Skills/ Abilities:
- Demonstrated executive leadership with proven ability to inspire, develop, and hold accountable large, geographically distributed manufacturing organizations.
- Deep operational expertise across multiple manufacturing and supply chain disciplines with a strong understanding of advanced and intelligent manufacturing systems.
- Deep operating fluency (black belt certification preferred) in lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, daily management systems, and standard work—able to coach plant leadership through gemba and problem solving.
- Financial acumen with experience managing multi-site P&L, capital budgets, and cost-reduction initiatives.
- Strong proficiency with ERP systems (NetSuite or Oracle preferred), MES platforms, OEE tools, and MS Office Suite.
- Track record of leading large-scale change management and technology transformation programs.
- Deep knowledge of EHS regulations and a personal commitment to a zero-harm safety culture.
- Exceptional strategic thinking combined with a hands-on, results-driven leadership style.
- Outstanding interpersonal, communication, and executive-level presentation skills—comfortable presenting to a private-equity-backed board, customers, and shop-floor teams in the same week.
- Proven ability to lead through ambiguity and significant organizational change with steadiness, candor, and pace.
- Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in material handling, conveyance, sortation, robotics, or comparable engineered-to-order or configure-to-order discrete manufacturing.
- Lean Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent; formal lean leadership training (e.g., Shingo).
Education & Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Operations Management, or a related discipline; advanced degree (MS, MBA) preferred.
- 20+ years of progressive manufacturing leadership experience, with 10+ years at the multi-site senior leadership level.
- Demonstrated experience leading a manufacturing organization of 500+ employees across multiple sites.
Work Environment :
- This role requires frequent travel (approximately 30%—50%) between plant locations and customer sites domestically and internationally.
- The position involves both office-based work and regular presence on manufacturing floors. Must be able to work in varying industrial environments.
- Regular exposure to plant-floor conditions including industrial equipment, noise, and variable temperature.
Physical Requirements:
- Prolonged periods of computer and desk work are expected.
- Ability to walk, stand, and traverse manufacturing facilities for extended periods; occasionally climb stairs, ladders and access elevated platforms.
- Must be able to wear required personal protective equipment (PPE)—safety glasses, hearing protection, hard hat, and safety footwear—in production areas.
- Must be able to lift up to 25 pounds at times.
- Ability to travel domestically and internationally.
Trew EEO Statement
Trew and its companies are an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, nationality, sex, or veteran status.
Other Duties Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.
