Continuous Improvement - Continuous Improvement Manager II (Finance)
Lakeside Book Company's leadership team is fully committed to investing in our people,
our processes, and engaging with everyone from Operators to Managers. As a
Continuous Improvement & Quality Manager, you will lead, teach, and coach process improvement and lead quality efforts in our Crawfordsville locations.
Location: Crawfordsville has 2 facilities: South Plant located at 600 State Road 32
West; North Plant located at 1009 Sloan Street
What You'll Do:
- Drive cultural transformation by championing continuous improvement across the organization. Empower employees and stakeholders to embrace operational excellence as a core part of our daily work.
- Strengthen our quality management system by overseeing investigations into customer concerns and guiding the development of accurate, timely responses that drive accountability and resolution.
- Develop team capability, foster strong cross-functional relationships, and influence without authority to accelerate Lean adoption and cultural alignment.
- Lead a high-performing team of 6 direct and 10 indirect reports in executing strategic continuous improvement and quality processes.
- Design and deploy a robust platform for continuous improvement and integrate Lean tools and methodologies into a scalable management operating system.
- Serve as a strategic thought partner to executive and operational leadership, ensuring Lean principles and standardized manufacturing practices are consistently applied.
- Lead a portfolio of enterprise-level projects aimed at improving the efficiency, agility, and effectiveness of our supply chain and manufacturing processes.
- Coach and mentor teams in advanced problem-solving methodologies (e.g., Kaizen events, PDCA, DMAIC, PFMEA, A3, and 8D) to build organizational capability.
- Establish and lead a process improvement PMO that tracks project milestones, mitigates risks, and ensures a healthy, multi-year pipeline of costs savings and performance improvement initiatives.
- Monitor and analyze key performance indicators (KPI's) and operational data to identify priorities, define project scopes, and allocate resources for maximum impact.
- Up to 15% travel
Qualifications:
- Supply Chain degree, Engineering degree, Business \Administration degree or related field; Bachelor Degree required.
- Lean or Six Sigma certification
- Lead over 50 Kaizen events and 15 Value Stream Analyses
- 5+ years of experience doing heavy data analysis in Excel or Minitab
- 3+ years of people leadership experience in a manufacturing environment
