Vice President of Manufacturing Operations - Novanta

Build a career powered by innovations that matter!  At Novanta, our innovations power technology products that are transforming healthcare and advanced manufacturing—improving productivity, enhancing people’s lives and redefining what’s possible.  We create for our global customers engineered components and sub-systems that deliver extreme precision and performance for a range of mission-critical applications—from minimally invasive surgery to robotics to 3D metal printing.

Novanta is one global team with over 26 offices located in The Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.  Looking for a great place to work?  You have found it with a culture that embraces teamwork, collaboration and empowerment.  Come explore Novanta.

As Vice President of Operations, you lead a function that supports the manufacturing of engineered-based lasers and laser components.  You will lead teams across multiple manufacturing centers including Bedford, MA and Taunton, UK.

You have a passion for developing people and process. You will deliver outcomes through dynamic leadership in people, quality, continuous improvement, materials, production, information technology, and logistics. You drive excellence and engagement through the organization while ensuring safety, quality, delivery, productivity and profitability, and effectively partnering with other functions in the value chain.

Primary Responsibilities:

People & Talent Management

• Develop and mentor direct reports and team members to reach their next career goals and to increase understanding of customer expectations and operating environments.
• Continue to build and develop a highly engaged, high-performing, growth-oriented organization.
• Ensure the team is doing the right things (focusing on the critical few) and doing things right (applying applicable processes from our NGS – Novanta Growth System - toolkit to reduce friction).
• Communicate and implement business vision and strategies to the team by linking business strategy to specific functional responsibilities through daily production meetings, organizational town halls and regular staff communications.
• Motivate associates to perform at their highest levels.

Operations Leadership

• Work with EHS leaders and functional leaders to foster a safety-first culture, reduce operational risk, and minimize the environmental footprint of our company operations.
• Develop and design best-in-class Operations processes and procedures based on expert understanding and relevant industry experience.
• Foster a process-driven culture of continuous improvement. Cultivate a problem-solving mindset at all levels of the organization by deploying the Novanta Growth System (NGS).
• Develop and administer budgets, plans and performance requirements linked to safety, quality, delivery and cost targets.
• Drive a cohesive approach in each aspect of Operations across a multi-site footprint, ensuring customer experience with ATI is consistent regardless of product manufacturing and distribution site.
• Lead adherence to existing quality standards while further strengthening Cambridge Technology’s quality system.
• Support customer demand in a high mix environment by applying planning processes to anticipate demand and level-load production schedules and materials flow.

Continuous Improvement

• Partner cross-functionally (Sales, Service, R&D, HR) to leverage NGS consistently, and at the front-line level, to reduce waste and standardize processes.
• Drive daily management as a team-based, visual process applied consistently at each point of impact to ensure process discipline and drive improvements. When off-track, hold self and team accountable to apply problem solving and take action with urgency.
• Work with talented Production Engineering managers and teams at each site to maximize production uptime and efficiency, including supporting materials efficiency projects (PPV and VA/VE).
• Maintain a kaizen event funnel focusing on the most important opportunities and problems in our business, as driven by our strategic plan and performance versus KPI’s. Champion kaizen work cross-functionally and drive commitment to sustaining improvements.

Supply Chain & Procurement

• Continue to build upon Novanta and Cambridge Technology procurement processes and tools to reduce supply-chain risk to customer delivery expectations.
• Work with talented team of Supply Chain professionals to: o Consistently deliver year-over-year savings on direct & indirect spend.
• Maximize material availability to ensure high levels of productivity and customer service via on-time delivery.
• Reduce excess inventory to improve working capital turns and maximize effective use of physical space.
• Engage effectively across Novanta and the Cambridge Technology platform where appropriate to improve leverage for maximum impact.

Strategic Insight

• Define Operations’ role in enabling previously unobtainable insights – supporting the implementation of breakthrough product innovation, while providing instruments with the highest field reliability, accuracy and stability, and delivering to customers when they expect.
• Collaborate and benchmark across Novanta to identify innovative solutions and implementation best practices, to address challenges and opportunities for operational competitive advantage.
• Provide Operations input to business decisions within Cambridge Technology and keep company leadership apprised of expected changes to the Operations landscape affecting business performance and core value drivers.
• Represent Operations perspective through acquisition diligence and integration, ensuring performance to established commitments.
• Represent Cambridge Technology and the Operations function when we have the opportunity to collaborate across Novanta.

General tasks

• Maintain compliance with the quality, occupational safety and environmental regulations and implementation of the instructions of the quality / environmental management officer and the occupational safety specialist.
• The leader is responsible for creating and maintaining facilities for his or her area of responsibility, and for giving instructions and taking other measures to ensure, maintain and improve occupational safety and environmental protection regarding occupational safety and environmental protection, the prevention of occupational accidents and environmental damage, occupational diseases and work-related health hazards.

Required Experience, Education, Skills and Competencies

• BS or BA Degree in a technical discipline (preferably in Electrical/Mechanical Engineering or related field).
• Master’s Degree in Management preferred.
• 15+ years of progressive leadership experience in an engineered solutions manufacturing environment preferred.
• Experience in engineering solutions manufacturing environments.
• Proven track record of delivering strong Operations results by leveraging business system tools.
• Proven track record leading in a cross-functional, matrixed organization.
• Success history in hiring, developing and promoting great talent.
• Extensive experience leading in a continuous improvement culture.
• Experience in the Operations aspects of acquisitions, including due diligence and post-merger integration.

Travel Requirements           

• Less than 50%

Novanta is proud to be an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action workplace. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, military and veteran status, disability, genetics, or any other category protected by federal law or Novanta policy.

Please call +1 781-266-5700 if you need a disability accommodation for any part of the employment process.