Director Operations

Director Operations

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As a member of the Safco Leadership Team, the Director of Operations plays a strategic role in overseeing overall operational performance across engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance, supply chain, and the distribution center (DC). This position collaborates closely with business teams and enterprise initiatives to promote cross‑business alignment and value sharing.

The Director of Operations leads functions in engineering, manufacturing operations, quality assurance, safety, business systems, supply chain management and distribution, ensuring seamless coordination between the plant, distribution center, and suppliers to deliver exceptional customer satisfaction. The role also promotes a positive safety culture, upholds rigorous quality standards, and fosters continuous improvement through data‑driven processes.

In partnership with others, the Director of Operations is responsible for both short‑term and long‑term planning, assessing emerging systems, capital investments, new technologies, and associated risks to keep assets, priorities, and capabilities aligned with Safco’s strategic goals. This position reports to the SVP of Safco at the New Hope, MN location.

• Set strategic direction for operations: lead development and execution of short‑and long‑term strategies across engineering, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, and distribution to achieve operational excellence and business goals.
• Establish and monitor KPIs: refine role‑aligned KPIs for engineering, production, quality, logistics, and DC performance; use data analytics to drive accountability, prioritize work, and accelerate continuous improvement.
• Champion safety and EHS partnership: partner with EHS to embed a unified safety culture across all sites and DC; ensure safety metrics, training, incident reduction programs, and leadership visibility make people safety an uncompromised priority.
• Optimize business systems and digital enablement: together with IT, select, implement, and govern business systems processes and tools (ERP, MES, WMS, PLM) and workflow tools that connect engineering, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain; build business cases and ROI analyses for technology and capital investments that drive measurable efficiency gains.
• Align product development with operations: collaborate with Sales and Product Development to ensure manufacturability, supply chain readiness, and DC handling are considered early; serve as gatekeeper of the stage‑gate process to enforce compliance with engineering, quality, and operational standards.
• Define and maintain quality standards: create and maintain product quality statements, specifications, and inspection protocols that reflect brand commitments and customer requirements; engage customers and industry standards to validate expectations and performance targets.
• Lead capital planning and delivery: own capital strategy and execution across sites and DCs, including annual budgeting, project justification, vendor selection, installation, commissioning, performance validation, and post‑project review; coordinate with enterprise and finance to align timing and maximize corporate leverage.
• Build a prioritized multi‑year project pipeline: develop and maintain a 3‑year portfolio of projects focused on safety, productivity, capacity, emerging technologies, and cost reduction; ensure clear business cases, resource plans, and prioritization criteria to deliver impact on schedule.
• Drive cross‑functional collaboration and talent development: foster strong cross‑business partnerships and standardize processes across engineering, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, and DCs; develop leadership, technical, and frontline talent to sustain operational capability and continuous improvement.
• Develop the operational and manufacturing budgets: approve and monitor expenditures, reporting variance to budget.
• Travel up to 25%.
• Other duties, as assigned.

• Observe and enforce all company personnel, quality, and safety policies.
• Maintain a…