Manufacturing Consultant

Location: UK (home-based with travel to customer sites)

Full time, permanent position

Industry Focus: Pharmaceuticals (with exposure to other manufacturing sectors)

I’m currently recruiting for a global manufacturer of automation and smart factory technologies. We are seeking an experienced manufacturing operations professional to join us as a manufacturing consultant.

This is a hands-on, manufacturing-led consulting role
. You will work directly with pharmaceutical manufacturing sites to improve production and packaging performance, drawing on your real-world experience of running manufacturing operations in regulated environments.

This role is ideal for someone who has owned production or packaging lines and now wants to apply that experience across multiple sites and industries — not someone looking for a pure CI, quality, or IT role.

• Working on-site with pharmaceutical manufacturers
• Assessing live production lines, equipment performance, changeovers, downtime, and material flow
• Engaging directly with operators, engineers, and production managers to understand real operational constraints
• Leading shop-floor workshops and Gemba-based assessments focused on practical improvements
• Applying lean and continuous improvement methods to stabilise and improve line performance
• Supporting digital and data-driven improvements (e.g. OEE, MES usage)
  from a manufacturing user perspective
• Applying the same operational expertise to other regulated and discrete manufacturing industries over time

• Hands-on experience owning or running manufacturing or packaging operations in a pharmaceutical environment
• Strong understanding of GMP manufacturing and operational realities
• Experience working directly with production lines, machines, and operators
• Ability to diagnose operational issues and drive practical improvements
• UK based and able to work without sponsorship
• Experience with Lean, CI, or operational excellence tools applied on the shop floor
• Exposure to MES, OEE systems, or manufacturing digitalisation (as a user or operational owner

This role is not suited to candidates whose experience is limited to:

• Pure CI / Lean / Black Belt positions without production line ownership
• Quality or regulatory-only roles
• IT, MES, or automation roles without manufacturing accountability

If you’ve got this far - Hit apply! We are actively reviewing candidates to onboard someone as soon as possible. If you prefer a direct approach, feel free to email your CV to me (Michael Frankland) at