Operations Excellence Manager

Corporate Office
4401 Main Ave
Fargo, ND 58103, USA

POSITION
:
Operation Excellence Manager
SHIFT
:
Monday - Friday, 8:00 am-5:00 pm
PAY RATE
: $103,807 - $115,000+ (DOE) + Full Benefit Package
LOCATION
:
Fargo, ND

The Operations Excellence Manager leads continuous improvement and manufacturing engineering across True North Steel manufacturing sites. This role directs Continuous Improvement Leaders and Manufacturing Engineers to deliver practical solutions that improve margins, quality, productivity, throughput, capacity utilization, and return on capital investments.

• Embrace and demonstrate the qualities of the True North Steel Game Changer definition.
• Lead the operational excellence strategy and translate organization approved priorities into actionable improvement plans.
• Establish accountable ownership for product-line operating systems, process development, approved standards, KPI creation, Management of Change, cross-site deployment, and sustainment activities.
• Hire, lead, coach, and develop Continuous Improvement Leaders and Manufacturing Engineers; establish clear expectations, priorities, decision rights, development plans, and accountability for results.
• Partner with Operations leaders to identify material overages, process bottlenecks, labor-productivity opportunities, workflow constraints, capacity limitations, material-handling waste, and technology needs.
• Prioritize improvement work using strategic vision, safety, customer impact, product-margin improvement opportunity, cost of poor quality reductions, throughput increases, operational risk, headcount needs, and site readiness.
• Partner with Finance to establish benefit-calculation methods and validate realized labor, material, quality, working-capital, return-on-investment, capital-payback, and product-margin improvements.
• Ensure Continuous Improvement Leaders maintain product-line roadmaps, facilitate structured problem solving, define future-state processes, coordinate adoption plans, and complete project effectiveness reviews.
• Ensure Manufacturing Engineers remain focused on technical execution, including automation, robotics, tooling and fixture design, process and equipment layouts, manufacturing methods, time studies, capacity analysis, bottleneck elimination, equipment justification, and capital implementation.
• Ensure successful improvements are converted into approved operating standards, work instructions, training, process controls, KPI expectations, audit requirements, and cross-site deployment plans.
• Partner with Quality Assurance to use nonconformance, corrective-action, rework, scrap, warranty, audit, and process-capability data to target recurring systemic losses and verify improvement effectiveness.
• Partner with Safety to ensure new equipment, technical changes, workflows, and improvement initiatives meet safety requirements and follow the Management of Change process.
• Maintain a working understanding of True North Steel product lines, fabrication and welding processes, site capabilities, operational constraints, customer requirements, and emerging manufacturing technologies.
• Travel to manufacturing sites, suppliers, and equipment partners as required, anticipated up to 30% of the time.
• Prompt and dependable attendance.
• Other duties as assigned.

• Strong knowledge of Lean manufacturing, structured problem solving, process governance, Management of Change, standard work, value-stream improvement, and sustainment systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead manufacturing engineers and continuous improvement in a multi‑site manufacturing environment.
• Preferred working knowledge of steel fabrication, welding, automation, robotics, tooling, production…