As a member of the Commercialization Team, you will play a crucial role in turning concepts into successful market-ready products. You'll coordinate across R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Marketing, and Procurement-connecting strategy to execution and ensuring projects stay on track. Your ability to solve problems, anticipate risks, make data-informed decisions, and bring teams together is what makes new innovation possible at Winland.
Employee Type:
Full time
Location:
IL Oak Brook
Job Type:
Supply Chain Commercialization
Job Posting Title:
Commercialization Manager
Job Description:
Schedule: (Hybrid) Fridays are remote, while Mon-Thurs are in office
Work Location: 2015 Spring Road Suite 400, Oak Brook, IL 60523
Benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k) with match, STD/LTD/AD&D/Life, HSA, FSA, EAP, Hospital indemnity, Accident Insurance, Identity and Fraud Protection Plan, Legal, and Critical Illness.
Salary, based on experience and other qualifications: $93k to $138k Annually, with additional bonus potential
As a Manager, you lead cross-functional teams from project definition through successful launch, fostering collaboration and driving consistent, successful execution. Your work will help deliver high-quality products to retail shelves and restaurant tables, reaching millions of consumers. You are the central point of coordination and accountability-motivating teams, resolving conflicts, and ensuring project success through clear structure, communication, and decision-making.
What the Commercialization Team Does:
• Serves as the project manager for commercialization projects that cut across innovations, product reformulations and graphic refreshes. Leads and coordinates cross-functional teams to bring initiatives from concept through launch.
• Manages high complexity projects requiring direct customer-facing engagement.
• Translates ideas and requirements into clear project plans, timelines, and deliverables.
• Identifies risks early and collaborates to develop solutions that keep launches on track.
• Optimizes processes, drives cost savings, and champions continuous improvement efforts.
• Uses tools like PPM, SAP, and Power BI to track progress, measure results, and support data-driven decision making.
• Facilitates communication across multiple teams and levels of the organization, ensuring alignment and transparency.
Skills a Commercialization Team Member Demonstrates
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities.
• Clear communication and the ability to influence without authority.
• Analytical thinking and comfort working with data in multiple systems.
• A collaborative mindset with a focus on problem solving and efficiency.
• A passion for bringing ideas to life and driving exceptional execution.
Roles and Responsibilities:
• Leads projects through the established stage-gate process, ensuring required deliverables, decisions, and approvals are completed at appropriate milestones.
• Develops integrated project plans defining scope, objectives, milestones, dependencies, deliverables, owners, and due dates.
• Establishes a reliable single source of truth for project status, milestones, risks, decisions, and outstanding actions.
• Coordinates activities across R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, Packaging, Quality, Regulatory, Finance, Sales, Marketing, and other functional partners.
• Provides visibility to risks that could affect launch timing, customer commitments, cost, or successful execution and develop contingency plans with cross functional input.
• Partners with operations and technical teams to support plant trials, production qualifications, new equipment or process requirements, capacity considerations, and manufacturing readiness.
• Partners with business and functional leaders to support prioritization of commercial activities.
• Motivates and influences cross-functional team members to achieve project deliverables.
• Prepares concise, executive-ready updates that translate detailed project information into key messages, decisions, risks, and actions.
The duties and responsibilities described are not a comprehensive list of all tasks. Additional tasks and duties may be assigned from time to time as necessitated by business needs.
Qualifications & Experience:
• Bachelor's degree required; Business, Project Management, Supply Chain, Operations, Food Science, or a related discipline preferred
• 2+ years leading cross-functional teams in a CPG or food manufacturing environment.
• 5+ years of commercialization, R&D, Supply Chain, or Operations experience.
• Strong communication, facilitation, and influence skills.
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience with SAP, PPM, and data visualization tools preferred.
• PMP certification a plus.
• Strong decision-making, conflict management, and communication skills.
• Experience with Microsoft Project or similar tools.
