About the Role:As a Continuous Improvement Manager, you will lead, develop and sustain the site's continuous improvement operating system by coaching leaders, strengthening daily management, building organizational capability, and ensuring improvement priorities are translated into measurable and sustainable business results. The role owns the site continuous improvement framework, governance and maturity plan, while enabling the line organization to execute and sustain improvement through leader-led accountability.
What You'll Do:- Own the annual site Continuous Improvement plan and the monthly CI Scorecard. Work with site leadership and the CI Steering Committee to develop, publish and maintain the CI plan, ensuring alignment with the site business plan, policy deployment priorities and key operational needs.
- Understand and own the Knauf CI Framework. Lead the site's CI maturity assessment cadence, including maturity scoring, gap analysis and roadmap development to strengthen the business system over time to drive industrial performance.
- Facilitate the CI Steering Committee and the site continuous improvement governance process, including monthly business planning reviews, prioritization oversight and follow-up to ensure improvement commitments are progressing as planned.
- Lead loss analysis for the monthly business planning review and use data, trends and business performance insights to identify gaps, prioritize improvement opportunities and support action planning.
- Partner with plant leadership to build and mature a leader-led Daily Management System, including visual management, SQDC review, standard leader work, tiered accountability, escalation routines and performance review cadence so problems are solved at the lowest appropriate level.
- Leads monthly kaizens to role model kaizen methodology, on the job development and drive performance improvement. Supports, trains and develops staff to perform additional kaizens to meet kaizen engagement targets.
- Guide and coach leaders and teams in the use of continuous improvement methodologies and tools, including root cause analysis, process mapping, team problem solving, kaizen, Lean Six Sigma, KATA, and other applicable tools.
- Support the prioritization and governance of the site improvement funnel, ensuring opportunities are aligned to business needs, appropriately resourced, and tracked through completion and sustainment.
- Coach the front line and leadership of the organization to lead improvement activities and problem solving at the appropriate level, ensuring CI capability is built in the business rather than dependent on the CI function to execute all events directly.
- Lead CI capability development for the site. Establish, publish, maintain and update a site CI training and capability-building plan as part of the CI plan. Deliver training, coach leaders, and support the development of CI champions across the organization.
- Establish and strengthen sustainment mechanisms for improvements, including control plans, standard work, visual controls, layered audits, leader checks and follow-up routines to ensure gains are held over time.
- Ensure that CI tracking tools are accurate and up to date. Generate monthly reports on schedule and support fact-based performance reviews.
- Use current plant systems and available data sources to monitor utilization, analyze trends, identify patterns of opportunity and support sustainment. CI owns implementation, adoption and effective use of improvement systems, while system administrators and support functions own technical maintenance, hardware uptime and tool administration.
- Celebrate, communicate and replicate successful improvement practices across the site and, where appropriate, across the wider business.
- Be an advocate for and set an example of Knauf Values and Behaviors in all actions and duties.
What You'll Need:Education:- Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Technology or related field
- Black or Green Belt Lean Six Sigma Certification preferred
Experience- Demonstrated experience leading or supporting continuous improvement, operational excellence, manufacturing, engineering or operations initiatives, typically gained over five years or through an equivalent combination of education and progressively responsible relevant experience.
- Experience coaching others, improving management systems, strengthening daily management and sustaining operational results through the line organization preferred.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:- Knowledge of process/continuous improvement tools, methodologies, and practices; knowledge of 5S process and layered audits
- Knowledge of root cause analysis
- Knowledge of statistical data
- Working knowledge of SAP preferred
- Ability to work extended hours as needed.
- Ability to identify areas of opportunity and provide creative solutions that will benefit KINA.
- Ability to facilitate group activities, coach/train others, ensuring company goals are achieved.
- Ability to travel up to 20% of the time.
- Ability to Coach and Train
- Computer skills in MS Windows environment; proficient in Word, PowerPoint, Teams and Excel. Minitab and Visio proficiency is preferred.
