Manager, Production Operations

Playaway Products is a company built on a simple belief: that everyone should have access to the joy of stories and learning, without barriers.

For more than 20 years, we’ve created thoughtfully designed technology that connects people to high-quality content from the world’s best publishers, developers, and studios. What started with a single pre-loaded audiobook player has grown into a family of products built for institutional circulation, where reliability, ease of use, and trust matter as much as innovation. We design for real-world conditions and make deliberate tradeoffs to prioritize access, durability, and ease of use over flash or novelty.

Today, we serve public libraries, schools, the military, and other institutional circulation markets. The work we do shows up every day in the lives of readers and learners — often in places where equitable access to technology and learning matters most.

As our products and partnerships grow, so does the opportunity to shape what access to learning looks like next. At Playaway, discovery begins with curiosity, and our culture values ownership, collaboration, and responsibility. This is a place for people who care about impact, are comfortable navigating ambiguity, and want to help build what comes next.

The Manager, Production Operations ensures Production has the people, processes, resources, and leadership needed to safely deliver quality products on time and at the expected cost while continuously improving performance.

This role sets the tone for the Production organization and is accountable for building a high-performing, engaged, and accountable team. The Manager, Production Operations develops the capabilities of the Production leadership team and establishes clear ownership throughout the organization.

The Manager, Production Operations balances daily operational performance with the longer-term development of people, processes, capacity, systems, and continuous improvement. The role leads the Production system rather than becoming the primary person solving day-to-day floor issues.

Key Responsibilities

• Production Leadership and Performance: Own overall Production performance by setting clear expectations and accountability, using data and KPIs to drive execution, proactively addressing risks, and ensuring safety, quality, productivity, cost, and customer commitments are consistently achieved.
• People Leadership and Development: Develop a strong and accountable Production leadership team. Establish consistent people-management practices, build future leaders, foster employee engagement and growth, and partner with HR on workforce planning and employee relations. Own and continuously improve the Production training system to ensure employees have the skills, knowledge, and documented standards needed to perform successfully.
• Capacity, Labor and Resource Planning: Translate demand into effective staffing, equipment, space, and technology requirements. Proactively address constraints and partner with Supply Chain and Operations to support customer delivery and business growth.
• Safety and Quality: Embed clear safety and quality accountability and controls into daily operations. Ensure issues are promptly escalated, resolved at the root cause, and addressed cross-functionally when product or process concerns recur.
• Productivity and Cost Management: Use data to optimize staffing, utilization, throughput, and key cost drivers while balancing service, capacity, safety, quality, and employee experience in partnership with Operations and Finance.
• Process and Continuous Improvement: Establish standard work, systematically eliminate inefficiencies and recurring issues, leverage technology and cross-functional partnerships, and engage…