Position Summary:
The Director of Manufacturing Operations is a senior leadership position responsible for overseeing all aspects of semiconductor laser assembly production. This role ensures operational excellence by managing strategic planning, production execution, and cross-functional collaboration to achieve world-class standards in quality, delivery, efficiency, and safety. The director drives continuous improvement and innovation, supporting the company's growth and competitiveness in both military and commercial markets.
Responsibilities:
- Manages strategic and tactical aspects of semiconductor laser assembly production for medium-to-high-volume production of ruggedized military & commercial products
- Establishes production schedules with planning and business groups and executes against schedule to meet goals for revenue, on-time delivery and lead-time
- Provides supervision and leadership to direct reports including employee performance management, motivating and facilitating continuous learning and development, conducting annual performance appraisals, and providing timely feedback and recognition.
- Meets aggressive, world-class goals on quality, cycle time, yield and cost
- Leads global multi-disciplinary teams to deliver new products, sustaining engineering, and NPI of laser-based product lines as part of key strategy in vertically integrated organization.
- Analyzes bottlenecks and establishes sufficient capacity to cost-effectively meet production demands
- Drives continuous improvement opportunities and yield metrics utilizing wide variety of analytical techniques (such as FMEA, SPC, DOE, Gage R&R, 8D), lean manufacturing, and six sigma concepts.
- Coordinates with facilities, including maintenance and buildouts, for optimal uptime and cost
- Interfaces with senior leadership and various support functions such as Supply Chain, Development Engineering, Quality, Finance, HR, and IT as required to establish plans and execute against them
- Collaborates with R&D to analyze competition, market trends, emerging technology and drives strategic engineering projects into production as capable products & processes.
- Ensures strong safety program in place
- Manages and motivates direct staff
- Builds upon ISO9001:2000 certified quality management system in place
Qualifications:
- Requires a BS in Engineering (Optical, Physics, Electrical, Chemical, Mechanical) and 10+ years high-tech manufacturing experience with at least five years in a managerial role, or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
- MS in Engineering or Business is preferred.
- 8+ years of experience in product & process development, NPI or process control of laser systems/photonic components
- 8+ years of experience working for company providing products for US Defense and/or Government Contracting.
- Working knowledge of FAR/DFAR requirements, and ITAR-compliant operations
- Skilled in implementing and utilizing lean manufacturing, SPC, ERP, and MRP systems
- Strong business and people skills, including strategic thinking, executive communication, and basic business financial acumen
- Strong record of developing and transferring products and processes related to laser systems and photonic components
- Strong record of effective judgement and decisiveness, clear thinking, problem solving through structured methodologies
- Strong situational leadership skills, record of developing great teams and strong hires
- Sets very strong culture of accountability, disciplined thinking, integrity and expectations, leads by example
- APICS CPIM experience is preferred, but not required
- Six Sigma Black Belt is preferred, but not required
- Strong communication skills
- Excellent team player
- Demonstrated ability to protect confidential and proprietary information and exercise discretion.
- Ability to travel up to 15%