Manufacturing Manager

Company Overview Why Choose Us?

Novolex is a leading manufacturer of food, beverage, and specialty packaging that supports multiple industries including food service, restaurant delivery and carryout, food processing, grocery and retail, and industrial sectors. Novolex manufacturing and sourcing expertise spans a diverse range of substrates including resin, paper, molded fiber, aluminum and more. We provide customers a broad array of stock and customized solutions with 120 product categories, 250 brands and over 39,000 SKUs.

The Novolex sustainability vision is built upon three pillars: our products, our operations and our people. Each is critically important to our growth and future as a business. These pillars form the foundation of our company-wide commitment to sustainability, helping us achieve our ambitious goals through our wide-ranging initiatives.

Summary:

The Unit Manager is responsible for providing leadership, direction, and accountability for assigned departments, product lines, or profit centers and their teams to achieve safety, production, quality, people, customer, and financial objectives. The Unit Manager provides strategic and operational leadership while maintaining focus on critical day-to-day details. This position is responsible for developing a high-performing team, driving continuous improvement, managing resources effectively, and ensuring operational excellence.

The Unit Manager supports and/or serves as the Plant Manager in their absence or as otherwise assigned.

Essential Functions &

Key Responsibilities:

• Leads with a safety-first mindset, ensuring safety is integrated into all operational decisions, activities, and priorities.
• Maintains a safe work environment by ensuring compliance with company safety policies, procedures, standards, and applicable regulations.
• Identifies, communicates, and promptly addresses unsafe conditions, behaviors, and practices.
• Develops and reinforces a strong safety culture through employee engagement, coaching, accountability, and visible leadership on the production floor.
• Leads or participates in safety investigations, root cause analysis, corrective actions, and follow-up to prevent recurrence.
• Ensures employees are appropriately trained and held accountable for safe work practices.
• Partners with the Plant Manager, EHS, and other functions to establish and achieve safety objectives and continuously improve plant safety performance.

• Provides leadership and direction for assigned departments, product lines, or profit centers within a 24/7 manufacturing operation.
• Supervises and provides direction to up to 150+ salaried and hourly employees through effective planning, delegation, communication, and accountability.
• Schedules, plans, and monitors production activities to achieve established safety, quality, delivery, productivity, and efficiency goals.
• Ensures production resources, staffing, equipment, materials, and processes are effectively utilized to meet customer and business requirements.
• Monitors key production metrics, including efficiency, downtime, throughput, labor utilization, scrap, and schedule attainment, and takes timely action when performance is below expectations.
• Demonstrates strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills by analyzing complex operational issues, identifying root causes, and implementing effective solutions.
• Maintains a strong focus on execution and results while balancing immediate operational needs with long-term business objectives.
• Provides timely and effective communication up and down the organization regarding production priorities, performance, challenges, and expectations.
• Serves as a cross-trained backup to the Plant Manager and assumes additional plant leadership responsibilities as needed.

• Builds and maintains a high-performing workforce through effective hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, development, recognition, and performance management.
• Establishes clear expectations and holds leaders and employees accountable for performance, behaviors, attendance, safety, quality, and adherence to company policies.
• Develops strong coaching and mentoring relationships with employees and leaders to support individual growth, succession planning, and talent development.
• Identifies and develops top talent and delegates meaningful responsibilities and initiatives to accelerate leadership capability and organizational growth.
• Creates an inclusive,…