Operational Excellence Manager - #134843

With over 80 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency. Every day approximately 8,700 employees are helping customers in more than 60 countries stay competitive. Kennametal generated $2 billion in revenues in fiscal 2022. Learn more at www.kennametal.com. Follow @Kennametal: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Site Lean Manager Operation Excellence

Site Lean Manager will lead continuous improvement and lean manufacturing efforts to improve Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for safety, quality, production, delivery, and cost. In this role, you will act as a change agent to help eliminate non-value-added activities while improving operational excellence throughout the facility.

Day-to-Day Role:

• Facilitate regular improvement planning sessions to identify key strategic opportunities to achieve manufacturing strategic goals through Value Stream Mapping, and develop related action plans with measurable outcomes.
• Support and reinforce the effective application of the Management System to validate that actions lead to desired performance improvements.
• Analyze observations and data to fully understand and categorize issues and areas for improvement.
• Develop, implement and support the effective application of best practices as Standard Work, Standard Operating Conditions, and Standard Operating Procedures.
• Facilitate problem-solving by leveraging/modeling continuous improvement methodologies to eliminate root causes and permanently reduce variance, using the DMAIC and DFSS approach.
• Analyze lines for constraints and bottlenecks to achieve a continuous flow.
• Advocate for the Voice of the Customer (VOC) via process capability and defect elimination.
• Conduct timing and point of loss yield studies to identify the loss Pareto.
• Perform data analysis and provide written reports that make problems and opportunities visible.
• Develop countermeasures ranging from basic problem containment to system repair to equipment replacement.
• Generate and communicate implementation plans using Gantt charts and work breakdown structures and coordinate resources to staff implementation plans as necessary.
• Proactively seek and identify problems that need to be resolved and quantify the anticipated benefits of problem resolution.

Core Skills and Qualifications:

The ideal candidate must possess the following:

• Bachelor's Degree in Operations, Engineering or other manufacturing-related fields
• Five (5) years of continuous improvement (Lean Manufacturing) experience in a manufacturing environment
• Strong understanding and demonstrated experience in the areas of Continuous Improvement, Operational Excellence, Lean principles, Value Stream Mapping, statistics, and data analysis
• Experience using Microsoft Office, including the ability to create basic reports, documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint.
• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal.
• Ability to learn and understand materials, production processes, quality control, costs, and other techniques for maximizing the effective manufacture and distribution of products.
• Experience in optimizing the performance of one or more of the following:
  • EHS systems for a safe working environment
  • Value Stream Mapping
  • DMAIC and DFSS
  • SMED
  • Kanban
  • One-piece flow
  • Identification and waste elimination techniques
  • People development for engagement and ownership

Preferred Skills and Qualifications:

• Lean / 6 Sigma Certification Black Belt, American Society for Quality Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence or American Society for Quality Certified Quality Engineer

Kennametal Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. As such, it is the policy of Kennametal Inc. to afford equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, veteran status, or other protected status, group, or characteristic under federal, state, and/or local law or regulation. It is Kennametal Inc.'s policy to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.