Plant Manager

Smurfit Westrock • Lansing, MI

27d • Onsite

About The Position

The Plant Manager provides overall leadership for plant operations across three shifts and a workforce of more than 200 colleagues. This role is responsible for creating a safe, efficient, and high-performing manufacturing environment while ensuring production, quality, customer service, maintenance, people, and operational goals are consistently achieved. In this role, you will partner closely with Operations, Maintenance, Human Resources, Sales, Customer Service, and other functional leaders to establish priorities, remove barriers, improve processes, and ensure customer commitments are met. You will also play a key role in developing leaders and employees, driving accountability, and creating a culture focused on safety, quality, continuous improvement, and operational excellence. Day to day, you can expect to spend time on the production floor engaging with leaders and employees, reviewing production and performance results, addressing operational challenges, supporting customer requirements, prioritizing maintenance needs, and developing solutions that improve plant performance. You will balance immediate operational needs with longer-term initiatives that strengthen the overall capability and performance of the facility.

Requirements

• Key competencies include leadership, accountability, safety mindset, customer focus, operational excellence, strategic thinking, problem solving, decision making, collaboration, communication, talent development, adaptability, and continuous improvement.
• Minimum of seven years of progressive supervisory or operations leadership experience within a manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading production operations and frontline teams in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Strong understanding of production planning, scheduling, maintenance, safety, quality, and continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to analyze operational information and use data to identify issues, establish priorities, and drive business decisions.
• Strong verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively and influence at all levels of the organization.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, motivate, coach, and develop others.
• Strong organizational and prioritization skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Ability to make timely, independent, and effective decisions.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications and other business systems.

Nice To Haves

• Four-year college degree in business, operations, engineering, manufacturing, or a related field.
• Previous experience as a Plant Manager, Plant Superintendent, Operations Manager, or comparable manufacturing leadership role.
• Experience within the printing, packaging, or related manufacturing industry.
• Experience supporting capital projects, equipment installation, and facility improvements.
• Experience with continuous improvement methodologies and operational performance management.
• Experience partnering with customers and commercial teams to support customer requirements and business growth.

Responsibilities

• Lead overall plant operations across three shifts and more than 200 colleagues, ensuring safe, efficient, and reliable performance.
• Drive achievement of production, quality, safety, customer service, housekeeping, maintenance, and scheduling objectives.
• Partner with supervisors and production teams to establish attainable performance goals, identify barriers, and improve results across machine centers.
• Analyze operational data and performance reports to identify trends, opportunities, and actions needed to improve plant performance.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives that increase productivity, efficiency, quality, and operational effectiveness.
• Support the evaluation, selection, installation, and implementation of capital equipment and facility improvements.
• Partner with Maintenance leadership to prioritize work orders, preventive maintenance activities, repairs, and capital projects.
• Champion a strong safety culture by ensuring compliance with company standards and applicable safety requirements, supporting incident investigations, and maintaining an active safety program.
• Maintain a clean, organized, safe, and customer-ready facility.
• Develop supervisors and employees through coaching, feedback, performance management, training, and professional development.
• Partner with Human Resources on employee relations, workforce needs, training, performance management, and other people-related initiatives.
• Conduct and support training activities including new employee orientation, safety, leadership development, team training, and operational standards.
• Collaborate with Sales and Customer Service to ensure customer requirements are understood and met in a timely manner.
• Lead daily production discussions focused on meeting customer commitments and achieving on-time delivery.
• Partner with scheduling and production teams to ensure customer orders are manufactured and delivered as committed.
• Monitor inventory levels and oversee monthly and annual inventory counts.
• Support customer visits and plant tours while maintaining strong relationships with internal and external business partners.
• Serve as a member of the plant leadership team and contribute to broader business and operational strategies.
• During the first six months, the Plant Manager will focus on developing a strong understanding of the operation, building relationships with employees and key functional partners, assessing safety and operational performance, evaluating leadership and workforce capabilities, and identifying immediate opportunities to improve productivity, reliability, quality, and customer service.
• Longer term, this role will be expected to build sustainable processes, strengthen leadership capability, develop talent, drive continuous improvement, and deliver consistent results across safety, quality, productivity, cost, and customer performance.

Benefits

• Comprehensive training with numerous learning and development opportunities
• Competitive salary reflecting skills, competencies, and potential
• A career with a global packaging company where sustainability, safety, and inclusion are foundational to how we operate
• Competitive total rewards package including medical, dental, and vision coverage options starting on your first day
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with company contributions and flexible spending account (FSA) options
• 401(k) retirement plan with company match and automatic contributions to support your long-term financial goals
• Company-paid life insurance and disability coverage for financial protection
• Mental health support and wellness programs designed to promote overall well-being
• Generous paid time off, including company holidays, vacation, and paid parental leave
• Tuition reimbursement and ongoing learning and development opportunities
• Additional voluntary benefits such as legal services, identity protection, pet insurance, and more

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: Associate degree