Plant General Manager
About The Position
As part of a growth-driven restructuring of our operations organization, Open Road Brands is creating a single senior on-site leader who owns manufacturing and warehouse execution end to end — from raw material through production, staging, and shipped customer orders. The Plant General Manager reports to the COO and serves as the senior operations leader in our Wichita facility. This is a builder’s role. The company has more demand than its current capacity comfortably supports, and the Plant General Manager’s mandate is to convert that demand into shipped dollars: increasing throughput, improving labor efficiency, tightening scheduling and capacity planning, connecting manufacturing and warehouse into one flow, and leading a practical, sustained Lean transformation. The right candidate will run today’s operation while building the systems that let the operation scale.
Requirements
- 10+ years of progressive manufacturing operations experience, including 5+ years leading multi-department teams through managers and supervisors.
- Plant, site, or value-stream leadership experience in a production environment.
- Demonstrated, hands-on Lean implementation (5S, standard work, visual/daily management, root-cause problem solving) that stuck.
- Ownership of production scheduling, capacity planning, and operating budgets.
- Track record of improving throughput and labor efficiency without simply adding headcount.
Nice To Haves
- Experience spanning both manufacturing and warehouse/distribution operations.
- Consumer products, décor, printing, wood products, or similar discrete manufacturing background.
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering, operations, business, or related field — or equivalent experience.
Responsibilities
- Take direct ownership of the production schedule, then improve schedule accuracy, attainment, and capacity visibility across manufacturing and warehouse.
- Improve output per labor hour through better training, standard work, supervision, and labor deployment — building capacity through systems and flow, not just headcount.
- Connect manufacturing, staging, warehouse, and shipping into one accountable value stream that reliably supports customer commitments and on-time, in-full delivery.
- Establish 5S, visual management, daily management, and root-cause problem solving as the facility’s operating system — practical, measurable, and sustained.
- Manufacturing systems, layout, equipment utilization, and production discipline across printing, paint, routing, finishing, assembly, and packaging.
- Warehouse execution: material flow, staging, picking, packing, loading, and shipment readiness.
- Weekly and monthly throughput, schedule attainment, and capacity planning — including looking months ahead at demand, labor, material, and equipment constraints.
- Operating budget and expense: labor, overtime, supplies, maintenance, scrap, rework, and avoidable cost.
- Staffing plans, supervisor accountability, and development of a stronger bench of operational leaders.
- Material availability, in partnership with purchasing, sourcing, and finance.
- Facility condition and safety: a clean, organized, customer-ready plant every day.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation package
- Annual performance incentive plan tied to plant KPIs
- Full benefits package
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
Education Level
Associate degree
