Operational Excellence Manager

About Kennametal

With over 80 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace and defense, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency. Every day approximately 8,700 employees are helping customers in nearly 100 countries stay competitive. Kennametal generated $2.1 billion in revenues in fiscal 2023. Learn more at www.kennametal.com. Follow @Kennametal: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Job Title: Operational Excellence Manager

Location: Rogers, AR

Job Summary

The Operational Excellence Manager is responsible for leading and implementing continuous improvement initiatives at their location and supporting additional Kennametal sites, as needed. They analyze existing processes, identify areas for improvement, and lead kaizen activities to optimize operations and increase efficiency. This position will report to the Sr.OpEx Manager under the Global OpEx department, with a dotted line to plant management to drive alignment, gain support, train personnel, and implement improvement initiatives that build lean culture.

Key Job Responsibilities

Lean COMPETENCIES

• Develop competencies of all appropriate people of the Site / Plant about :
• 5S & Product respect.
• Reduction of equipment losses.
• Direct Labor efficiency.
• Scrap reduction.
• WIP reduction.
• Lean industrialization.
• VSM.
• To become autonomous in continuous improvement management.
• Manage site OpEx engineer if needed.
  
  

• Propose to the Site / Plant Manager the internal lean strategy of the Site / Plant.
• Ensure that the lean rules are taken into account in new projects during validation of each phase.
• Help Site / Plant Manager to manage continuous improvement.
• Monitor the whole lean initiative deployment.
• Manage the production productivity improvement roadmaps.
  
  

• For the 7 fields of competences listed above:
• Deploy lean standards & best practices within the Site / Plant.
• Make sure that lean standards are fully applied on the Site / Plant.
• Detect abnormalities vs. lean standards.
• React to identify root cause and come back to standard.
  
  

• Manage the lean budget.
• Manage the results of the productivity roadmap.
• Manage the results of the 7 fields of competencies listed above
• Implement the management of the daily results
• Lead the weekly & monthly results and associated TOP improvement plans.
• Data analysis and reporting
  
  

• Develop and share specific expertise with Site / Plant lean Managers of the region.
• Support Global/regional lean Manager for the benchmark of the local knowledge.
  
  

• Organize trainings for 5S, Product respect, TPM, SMED, Hoshin, STOP SCRAP, VSM, Kanban, Continuous flow, lean industrialization in accordance to Plant / Site priorities.
• Assess the lean standards are applied properly.
• Permanently promote the Lean principles.
• Organize daily meetings with internal Lean network.
• Perform annual professional competences appraisal.
• Validate the annual review of Lean engineer/analyst, if any.
  
  

• Challenge the Lean design concept & the systematic lean investment approach in each phase.
• Help the Site / Plant Manager to keep a continuous improvement mindset, behavior & policy whatever the operational situation.
• Support for the internal physical flows the Site / Plant Manager for VSM master plan, propose the yearly workshops list.
• Ensure Lean deployment (KPS, standards, workshops, and Global lean initiatives) in all production and Logistic departments.
• Collaboration and communication: Effective collaboration and communication are vital for success in this role. The Opex manager works closely with plant leadership, operations teams, quality assurance, maintenance, and other stakeholders. He / she communicates progress, challenges, and results to senior management and provide regular updates on Lean or Opex initiatives.
  
  

• Do On Job Training to coach Lean engineers/analyst & Site / Plant members on application of Lean tools and methodologies.
• Permanently help production Managers to detect and react to non-conformances against Lean standards.
• Lead kaizens and workshops. Working closely with cross-functional teams to streamline workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, and optimize resource allocation. This involves studying production data, conducting time studies, and using various tools to identify opportunities for efficiency gains.
• Lead pilot workshops for new Lean methodology for the site.
• Ensure the management of the maintenance of Lean tools through appropriate audits.
• Prepare & organize the weekly Site / Plant Lean committee, including agenda proposal, lead by the Site / Plant Manager, review kaizen workshops and write the minute.
  
  

• Accelerate Plant / Site progress through production & Supply Chain best practices sharing and deployment of best practices from outside the Site / Plant.
  
  

• Prepare the Site / Plant budget concerning Lean targets.
• Support Lean engineers/technician/analyst competence development and workshop pilots on results achievement and associated action plan.
• Manage the building of the tools to monitor the results daily.
• Ensure a lean reporting, KOS metrics correct.
• Quarterly lean mission report, share with site management team kaizen workshop status and saving achievements. (last quarter completed workshop, next quarter planned workshop, year to day saving summary, etc..
• Change management and establish continuous improvement culture agent for the plant
  
  

• Strong leadership skills including communication, teaching and coaching skills.
• Financial Acumen
• Data analyzation, platforms, data modeling and visualization
• Advanced in Excel, PowerBI, Project Management tools
• 5S & Zoning, visual management.
• Standard work and cycle time measurement.
• Muda Hunting.
• Pull flow/ Kanban.
• SMED.
• TPM.
• VSM.
• Data analysis and related software (i.e. Minitab)
• Industrial/Mechanical Engineer, technician or equivalent
• 6 Sigma Greenbelt or Blackbelt is plus