Manufacturing and Operational Excellence Project Manager

Job Description

Role/

Title:

VMC Operational Excellence Project Manager

W2

Full time on site in Boston

12 month contract

Proposed Role & Responsibilities:

• Operational Excellence and Process Improvement
  • Lead process discovery and assessment activities across manufacturing and business operations.
  • Develop SIPOCs, process maps, and Value Stream Maps.
  • Apply Lean Six Sigma tools to identify waste, bottlenecks, rework, delays, and improvement opportunities.
  • Facilitate root cause analysis and future-state design to translate findings into actionable recommendations.
• Facilitation and Stakeholder Engagement
  • Plan and facilitate workshops that drive alignment, consensus, and decision-making across stakeholder groups.
  • Manage competing perspectives and resolve process definition gaps to establish a shared understanding of current-state operations.
  • Communicate findings, recommendations, risks, and progress updates to operational teams and leadership audiences.
• Operational Support
  • Own the data pull and visual assembly for recurring reporting (e.g. project updates).
  • Maintain project tracking and status synthesis for daily check-ins and leadership updates.
  • Serve as first responder on ad-hoc data and analysis requests from stakeholders.
• Value Stream Data Architecture
  • Design and build a standardized value stream data architecture with reusable schema definitions.
  • Consolidate historical Value Stream Analysis (VSA) work into a single, quarriable baseline dataset.
  • Build a standard benefits logic library, ROI calculator, and integrated Value Register that ties baseline to intervention to measured outcome.
• Benefits Framework
  • Build standard benefits logic library defining calculations for time savings, throughput improvement, cycle time reduction, rework reduction, and cost avoidance.
  • Develop ROI calculator tool enabling consistent, defensible benefit quantification.
  • Create integrated OpEx Value Register linking baseline -> intervention -> measured outcome -> dollar value with supporting evidence.

Skills Needed:

Required:

• Demonstrated experience independently leading Operational Excellence, Lean Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement, or business process improvement initiatives.
• Hands-on experience developing SIPOC diagrams, process maps, and value stream maps.
• Strong facilitation and stakeholder-management skills, including experience leading cross-functional workshops, root cause analysis, and consensus-building activities.
• Strong analytical capability using Excel and at least one advanced analytics approach or tool, such as Python, SQL, Power BI, or a comparable platform, to analyze operational performance and quantify improvement opportunities.

Preferred:

• Experience in pharmaceutical or biotechnology manufacturing, including familiarity with GxP environments.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, or equivalent certification and applied experience.
• Experience developing business cases, ROI models, value registers, benefits-tracking frameworks, and value realization methodologies.
• Experience with advanced analytics, process visualization, or process-mapping tools such as Power BI, Snowflake, Visio, Miro, Lucidchart, or similar platforms.

Deliverables:

• Operational Excellence & Process Improvement
  • Develop validated SIPOC diagrams, process maps, and Value Stream Maps for targeted business and manufacturing processes.
  • Conduct process assessments that identify bottlenecks, waste, rework, delays, handoff issues, and improvement opportunities.
  • Facilitate root cause analysis and future-state design activities, resulting in actionable recommendations and prioritized improvement opportunities.
  • Deliver executive-ready summaries that communicate key findings, recommendations, expected benefits, and implementation considerations.
• Stakeholder Engagement
  • Plan and…