Continuous Improvement Project Manager

Worldpac • Oak Brook, IL

6d • $100,000 - $130,000

About The Position

The Continuous Improvement Project Manager is responsible for coordinating and leading large-scale, cross-functional initiatives across distribution, logistics, delivery, and supply chain environments. This role designs, develops, and manages people (through influence) and projects from initial concept/idea, requirements mapping, testing/piloting, rigorous validation, transparent success/failure criteria, and finally to mass deployment within business. This role will develop playbooks for different types of projects/initiatives to test new business concepts, ensure timelines and deliverables are met, and oversee the rollout of projects that are ready to be rolled out widely. The project manager is involved in all the technical, business, and process functions and uses an industry proven structured project management approach. The Project Manager identifies and addresses risks, roadblocks, and manages escalations within a periodic reporting cycle with executive management and ensures clear communication and alignment among all stakeholders. The position is full-time, with standard business hours with domestic travel expected to be in the 40-60% range.

Requirements

• 6-8 years of project management experience in distribution, logistics, or manufacturing, or other relevant industry with similar work content.
• Proven track record of managing large-scale deployments and leading cross-functional teams through various phases of a project life cycle.
• Strong organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience with Lean, Six Sigma, or other approaches preferred.
• PMP or similar project management certification is highly preferred.
• Clearly define what good looks like in this transition to a structured project management approach within Worldpac.
• Work through ambiguity to clearly identify performance measures (KPI/Metrics) that tie with various phases of each project life cycle.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and hypothesis-driven experimentation and not afraid to fail fast using a structured approach while leading initiatives.
• This role is critical to scaling operational excellence at WORLDPAC, ensuring that strategic initiatives are piloted, refined, and deployed effectively (breadth/depth).
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Operations Management, or related field.
• Advanced training/certification in project management, Lean, Six Sigma, or operational excellence methodologies preferred.
• Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt required; Black Belt or similar advanced certification preferred.
• Project Management Professional (PMP) or similar industry certification preferred.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrate leadership through influence and enables people development through structured problem solving.
• Capable of designing, building, and rolling out effective test/design criteria for improvement initiatives and effectively tracking metrics that define success/failure.
• Experience managing multi-dimensional improvement projects and applying refined change management approaches.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate and lead large-scale, cross-functional continuous improvement projects, including pilot programs at business functions, branches, or distribution centers.
• Develop and manage detailed project plans for the deployment of new business concepts, ensuring timelines, resources, and deliverables are met.
• Develop full cycle repeatable playbook for testing business ideas from our data intelligence teams, taking the ideas through its phases and managing the complexity in developing clear deployment roadmap for our operations team members.
• Oversee the rollout of initiatives to all locations, proactively identifying and addressing risks, roadblocks, and escalating exceptions to executive management.
• Serve as the primary point of contact for stakeholders of projects to support status updates, ensuring clear communication and alignment among stakeholders.
• Standardizing reporting formats for all initiatives, providing concise and crisp updates for executives and stakeholders on all project activities (past/current/future) by project type.
• Ensure change management best practices are applied to sustain improvements and scale operational excellence across the organization.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees