Head of Operational Excellence – NVD GROUP

Reporting directly to the CEO, and aligned with the leadership team, as head of Operational Excellence you will play a critical role in implementing the NVD OPEX agenda across NVD GROUP with specific focus on rolling out the NVD OPEX acceleration plan.

You will work with the Business Units Leaders and specifically the People and CX teams,  to build a culture of operational and customer excellence, implementing change, and driving Continuous Improvement (CI) across the Group by owning the strategy development and deployment in all business units.

You will support the business unit leadership team in creating a strategic vision of improvement goals, business master plan (deployment roadmap and maturity expectations based on priorities) and governance process across all functions and sites.

Pay and Benefits

• 100K with additional salary for relevant qualification and experience
• Continuous career pathway development
• Pension Scheme
• Work/Life balance
• Free on-site parking
• Cycle to Work Scheme

Main responsibilities will include

• Lead strategy development and deployment and ensure strategic alignment through cascading Key Performance Indicators (KPIs’) top down and bottom up
• Challenge existing paradigms, encourage, and promote internal and external benchmarking
• Develop and grow, zero loss mindset across critical areas to optimise a growth mindset and culture, safety, quality, delivery, and cost
• Demonstrate proficiency in guiding, coaching, and engaging people in the NVD Group values whilst you develop our excellence concepts and a systematic approach for all business and production managers across the group
• Ensure execution of and correct resourcing of breakthrough events. Develop and grow capability through component teams to establish the fundamentals of excellence in culture, safety, quality, and reliability
• Continue to drive NVD Group Excellence capability development and impact through deployment of dynamically advanced methodologies
• Achieve long term CI objectives through cross functional alignment of all resources toward shared goals
• Develop and grow NVD Group Excellence capability, to help the business units deliver a multi-year cost-to-win (CtW) program. Focus on building capability that improves problem solving, increases loss awareness, and empowers teams to eliminate loss and create gain, in an impactful, positive, efficient, and sustainable way
• Working closely with the MD, SMT, People and CX teams you will create the business relationships you need in the Business Units right across the NVD Group network to support the development and implementation of the improvement strategy for NVD Group OPEX Excellence maturity
• Support collaboration within the business unit to generate, sustain, and deliver a multi-year Cost to Win (CTW) portfolio, supervise optimization of loss awareness and loss landscape for the entire business
• Meet or exceed operational CtW (Cost to Win) goals by supporting focused Improvement team savings projects
• Develop a plan and support the execution of projects driving OPEX. Specifically waste reduction and productivity increases through engagement, alignment, education and motivational leadership
• Traveling expectation up to 30 of your working month. Hybrid working is a feature of the role.

About you

We are looking for a strong leader with minimum 10 years experience in manufacturing and or leadership experience in a plant, medical or professional service sector that shows a passion for safety (mental, physical and environmental) and is highly customer centric.

You will demonstrate a strong track record in project or program management with 3 to 5 years of experience leading Kaizen events, coaching and challenging at multiple levels of an organisational chart, to accelerate capability development and pace of improvement.

You will also have

• A relevant qualification in Engineering, CX, Business
• Qualification and proficiency in one or more OPEX methodology and have direct experience in leading the application of Operational Excellence / LEAN production and service standards
• Be able to lead out on transformational OPEX projects by motivating and influencing others in a positive, engagement leading way
• Be able to engage others to high levels of accountability and purpose
• Expertise in problem solving, as well as training and coaching others
• Experience in implementing, and solid understanding of, Lean business systems
• Excellent understanding of the interaction between operational excellence, people leadership, culture and customer service
• Ability to translate business objectives into tactical activities consistent across the NVD Group
• Be likable with a positive outlook, that can accelerate your engagement with teams driving projects forward
• Strong track record in project or program management with a key focus on strategic thinking and leadership skills
• Excellent and effective verbal and written communication skills with people at all levels of the organisation
• Experience of working in a multi-site and multi-cultural environment
• Strong business and financial acumen and ability to display the linkage between projects and desired business results