Operational Excellence Lead

Shepherd Electric Supply • Baltimore, MD

2d • Onsite

About The Position

Shepherd Electric Supply is seeking an Operational Excellence Lead to join their team. This role is crucial for maintaining and improving the company's operational reliability through the "ShepOS" (Shepherd Operating System). The Operational Excellence Lead will focus on the continuous improvement loop, specifically where error tracking (UET - Unquality Event Tracking) meets the company's playbooks and plays. The goal is to ensure that operational errors are systematically reviewed, patterns are identified, and plays are drafted and implemented to prevent recurring issues. This role involves owning the error lifecycle, serving as the owner of the UET playbook, identifying and drafting new plays in collaboration with functional leaders, building training infrastructure, and ensuring manager accountability through visible data. The ideal candidate will be energized by closing loops, influencing without direct authority, and building a culture of continuous improvement. This position is anchored to the Shepherd Compass values: Vision, Mission, and Values (We Keep Our Promises, We Stay Hungry, We Grow Together, We Own It, We Go Above & Beyond).

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in operations, supply chain, process improvement, quality management, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated track record of leading process improvement work where you had to influence people you did not directly manage.
• Strong analytical capability — comfortable working in data, identifying patterns, and translating findings into recommendations leadership can act on.
• Excellent written and verbal communication — you can write a one-pager that an executive will read and act on.
• Comfort with structured friction — you can hold peers and senior leaders accountable to commitments without making it personal.
• Bias toward action and follow-through — you do not let things drop.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in distribution, wholesale, or industrial supply.
• Eclipse ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) experience (Eclipse is Shepherd’s core operating system; SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, or comparable ERP experience also valued).
• Power BI (Business Intelligence) or comparable BI / visualization tools.
• Lean, Six Sigma, or similar continuous improvement training.
• Experience designing or delivering operational training in partnership with subject-matter experts — turning a process document into something a team can actually run.

Responsibilities

• Own the daily, weekly, and monthly cadence of how Shepherd reviews its operational errors, including triaging volume, surfacing patterns, and routing high-impact issues with clear close targets.
• Partner with the Business Process Optimizer to maintain and evolve the UET dashboard for leadership visibility.
• Hold the close-the-loop discipline to ensure every customer-impacting pattern is traced, addressed, and prevented from recurring.
• Serve as the named owner of Shepherd’s UET playbook, responsible for its versioning, quality gates, and evolution.
• Identify and draft new plays in partnership with functional leaders (Playbook Owners) when error patterns trace back to specific functional playbooks.
• Drive the cadence and close dates for new play adoption, influencing without taking ownership away from functional leaders.
• Partner with Playbook Owners to build training infrastructure (formats, cadence, materials) for Shepherd Standards to ensure consistent adoption.
• Co-deliver training where it strengthens the play and step back where the Playbook Owner is ready to lead.
• Build and maintain structural data to make manager performance against playbooks visible, escalating when Playbook Owners do not engage with documented gaps.
• Coach managers across all branches on how to read UET data, lead UET review meetings, discuss errors constructively, and use data for people development.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation with opportunity for growth
• Medical, dental, and life insurance
• Prescription drug coverage
• Paid vacation and personal time
• 401(k) with employer match
• Stable organization with over 130 years of industry leadership
• A culture where reliability is noticed, ownership is rewarded, and people come first

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed