Operational Excellence Manager; OpEx Manager

Operational Excellence Manager (Opex Manager)

We have an exciting opportunity for an Operational Excellence Manager to join our team in Middlesbrough.

Location:

Middlesbrough

Working Hours:

Monday – Thursday: 8:30am – 5pm & Friday: 8:30am – 4pm

Salary: £65,000 per annum

We are looking for a highly motivated professional to drive the identification and quantification of the improvement agenda in collaboration with the site leadership team, ensuring maximum focus and return on key strategic challenges. You will act as a leading change agent within the business, identifying and closing gaps in operational efficiency, capacity utilisation, wastage, quality, and safety against approved targets.

A key part of the role is embedding an Operational Excellence (OpEx) culture across the site by coaching, facilitating, and developing colleagues at all levels, contributing to ongoing OpEx delivery. Additionally, you will manage projects from concept through to handover, taking full responsibility for delivering them to the required time, cost, and specification standards while maintaining the highest levels of safety and quality compliance.

• Lead the diagnostic cycle to define the annual ‘bottom up’ Operational Excellence budget
• Collaborate with manufacturing colleagues to identify improvement opportunities, utilising data analysis, process observations and industry best practices and implementing flight plans to delivery
• Provide analytic support to enable an understanding of Current state, baseline performance and capture existing issues
• Implement principles of project governance and administration, including reporting on progress to plan and reporting of benefits delivery
• Collaboratively support and lead multi-skilled/cross functional teams
• Use industry knowledge, product and equipment knowledge, project management experience and relationships across the organisation to enable successful delivery of complex/challenging projects
• Collate data and present in an understandable format to be able to deliver required change
• Coaching and developing of Compleat Food colleagues from management to shop floor
• Develop and upskill colleagues in lean manufacturing principles, tools and techniques
• Facilitate, coach and support the effective deployment of a tiered Performance Management system at site level

• Formal qualification in an OpEx methodology such as but not limited to Lean Six Sigma, Lean, TPS
• Bachelor’s degree or qualification in a vocational or specialised field short of a degree level (HNC/HND) or Apprenticeship
• Minimum 5 years of work experience, preferably in manufacturing environments
• Proven experience of implementing and leading teams in delivery of continuous improvement projects and embedding an OpEx culture with quantifiable business impact
• Experience of coaching, developing, facilitating and leading teams
• Strong financial acumen including the ability to accurately value the monetary impact of initiatives
• Formal Lean/Lean Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement/OpEx methodology knowledge
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to analyse complex data and communicate findings
• Resilience and perseverance to establish an OpEx culture
• Experience of seeking and identifying cost opportunities, improving efficiencies, improving safety and quality capability, generating innovative/creative solutions
• Proven leadership skills and business acumen and the ability to work with different functions within the organisation
• Integrity to handle sensitive topics and respect/value the contributions of others
• Strong analytical, logical and numerical competence
• Highly developed influencing, persuasion and negotiation skills
• Excellent IT skills

• Salary Sacrifice Schemes - including Electric Vehicles, Home & Tech, Cycle to Work, and SMART Pension
• 33 days annual leave with an option to purchase extra days
• Holiday Discounts via our online retail platform
• Access to enhanced retail discounts online and in-store
• Free product handouts across our sites, so you can sample and enjoy our delicious products first hand
• EV…