Operations Excellence Manager at The Wonderful Company in Del Rey, CA

Job description

Develop and maintain a prioritized advanced manufacturing and continuous improvement roadmap aligned with plant and business objectives. Identify and evaluate opportunities to improve manufacturing processes through robotics, collaborative robots, machine vision, automated inspection, intelligent sensors, automated material handling, process automation, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence. Lead automation and manufacturing improvement projects from opportunity identification and business-case development through design, implementation, commissioning, startup, stabilization, and operational handoff. Conduct capacity, constraint, downtime, reliability, waste, quality, labor, and OEE analysis to identify and prioritize improvement initiatives. Lead A3 problem solving, DMAIC, root-cause analysis, Kaizen, value-stream mapping, TPM, standard work, and other structured continuous improvement activities. Determine whether manufacturing losses are best addressed through automation, maintenance, training, process redesign, standard work, or another countermeasure. Translate operational needs into project charters, functional requirements, scopes of work, acceptance criteria, budgets, schedules, and implementation plans. Develop capital requests and ROI analyses that define the problem, investment, risks, expected operational impact, and financial return. Coordinate cross-functional technical and design reviews with Operations, Maintenance, Engineering, Quality, EHS, IT/OT, OEMs, and system integrators. Participate in factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, commissioning, performance validation, and project closeout. Ensure automation projects address machine safety, food safety, hygienic design, sanitation, maintainability, software backups, spare parts, technical documentation, training, and lifecycle support. Evaluate practical AI applications including predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, computer vision, process optimization, automated reporting, knowledge management, and operator decision support. Partner with Electrical and Controls leadership to establish requirements for equipment integration, controls architecture, industrial networking, data collection, system backups, and documentation. Establish project baselines, performance targets, control plans, and benefits-verification methods; confirm that completed improvements are sustained. Coach cross-functional teams in structured problem solving, data-driven decision making, and effective adoption of new processes and technologies. Maintain a prioritized project portfolio showing ownership, timing, investment, status, expected value, and realized benefits. Communicate project priorities, risks, status, and results to plant and senior leadership Demonstrated experience leading manufacturing improvement and automation projects in an industrial environment. Strong working knowledge of Lean manufacturing, TPM, Six Sigma, A3, DMAIC, root-cause analysis, or comparable continuous improvement methods. Working knowledge of industrial automation technologies including PLCs, HMIs, VFDs, servo systems, industrial networks, sensors, instrumentation, robotics, machine vision, and machine-safety systems. Experience leading or supporting robotics, machine-vision, equipment-integration, process-automation, or automated material-handling projects. Experience developing project scopes, business cases, capital requests, budgets, schedules, operational targets, and ROI analyses. Ability to analyze OEE, downtime, throughput, capacity, quality, waste, labor, reliability, energy, and cost data. Experience coordinating OEMs, contractors, technology vendors, and system integrators. Experience participating in design reviews, FAT, SAT, commissioning, production startup, and operational handoff. Ability to communicate complex technical and analytical topics to technical and nontechnical audiences. Proficiency with manufacturing analytics, visualization, project-management, pr