Director, Operational Excellence & Advanced Engineering (RE925)

Director, Operational Excellence & Advanced Engineering Maryland Heights, MO Spartech offers a competitive salary, incentives, and benefit programs! Spartech, LLC, headquartered in Maryland Heights, Missouri, has over a dozen locations throughout the United States. We have a broad customer base with extensive product offerings and technologies. Many of our materials are used in products you might see every day - for example if you start your morning with a single serve yogurt, the container you ate from may be made from one of Spartech’s products or the refrigerator where the yogurt was stored could have Spartech products in its interior features. More unique uses of our products can be seen in military or security applications, for example in fighter jet canopies or bullet resistant windows. From routine daily-life to life-saving applications—we make a difference. Our broad scope of products and services keep our environment interesting and challenging with a culture focused on success. If you want to make a difference in a fast-paced environment with a company large enough to offer you room to grow but not so large that you become “just a number”, Spartech might be the ideal company for you. General Summary and Essential Duties & Responsibilities: The Director of Operational Excellence and Advanced Engineering leads enterprise-wide manufacturing improvement and technical capability across Spartech. The role owns the strategies, standards, and deployment systems for Lean, continuous improvement, performance management, automation, process engineering, and asset reliability. Equally, the role is accountable for delivering step-change advanced engineering solutions that improve equipment uptime, process control, capital efficiency, and error-proofing beyond incremental Lean gains. Reporting to the COO, this leader partners with plant management to improve safety, quality, delivery, cost, productivity, and equipment effectiveness while developing a sustainable culture of operational discipline. Requirements Key Responsibilities: Operational Excellence - Develop and execute a multi-site Operational Excellence roadmap, including Lean deployment, continuous improvement, Kaizen, value stream mapping, and waste reduction. - Institutionalize DMAIC, root-cause problem solving, and error-proofing; coach teams to deliver measurable and sustained improvements. - Identify, validate, document, and migrate manufacturing best practices across sites, balancing enterprise standards with site-specific requirements. - Establish common operational KPIs and definitions covering safety, quality, delivery, cost, productivity, scrap, downtime, and OEE. - Deploy standard work, visual factory management, tiered daily management, performance dashboards, escalation routines, and leader standard work. - Build Lean/Six Sigma capability through training, coaching, project governance, and benefits verification. Advanced Engineering - Lead the strategy for manufacturing automation, tooling, equipment upgrades, and technical standards; prioritize projects using safety, business value, ROI, and risk. - Provide functional leadership for process engineering, including elevated monitoring of process input variables, statistical process control, process capability, throughput, material utilization, and cycle-time reduction. - Establish enterprise maintenance and reliability standards that drive step-change improvements in facility and equipment uptime, including preventive/predictive maintenance, CMMS discipline, spare parts practices, and failure analysis. - Deploy Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), including autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, focused improvement, and systematic OEE loss elimination. - Drive capital efficiency and improved asset utilization by ensuring both new investments and the existing asset base deliver higher returns through better technical design, monitoring, and reliability. - Partner with plants on equipment specifications, capital justification, installation, commissioning, validation, and operational handoff. - Support new product introductions, process transfers, troubleshooting, and scalable adoption of proven manufacturing technologies, with deliberate use of error-proofing to sustain gains. Qualifications Required - Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, or related technical discipline. - 10+ years of progressive manufacturing, engineering, or operational excellence experience, including leadership in a multi-site environment. - Demonstrated success delivering step-change results (not only incremental improvement) through Lean, Six Sigma, DMAIC, standardization, and advanced engineering solutions. - Proven, hands-on leadership experience in automation and tooling, maintenance and reliability, and process engineering, including elevated process monitoring and statistical control. - Demonstrated ability to improve capital efficiency and asset utilization, including evaluation and delivery of investments that raise returns on both new and existing assets. - Experience applying structured problem solving with deliberate error-proofing to sustain operational gains. - Strong financial, analytical, communication, change management, and cross-functional leadership skills. Preferred - Advanced technical or business degree; Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. - Experience with plastics processing, extrusion, thermoforming, or related manufacturing. - Experience implementing TPM, CMMS, manufacturing analytics, and multi-site engineering programs. Benefits We offer competitive salary, incentives, and benefit programs. – Most Benefits Start Day ONE! Benefits include: - Medical, Dental, and Vision. - Flexible Spending Accounts. - Company paid Life & Long-term/Short-term disability programs. - 401(k) with strong company match. - 120 hours Paid Time Off (pro-rated based on hire date). - 11 paid holidays. Spartech, LLC provides equal employment opportunity to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status, or other legally protected classification in the state in which a person is seeking employment. Spartech will use E-Verify to ensure employment eligibility of newly hired employees where required.