Sr. Manager, Operational Excellence

About this role

Vulcan Elements is manufacturing American rare-earth permanent magnets for a secure, resilient future. With a focus on national security and economic resiliency, we serve critical industries such as defense, aerospace, and automotive powering a high-technology future. Vulcan Elements is building a team of ambitious professionals committed to Mission Focus, Technical Excellence and Transparency.

The Director of Operational Excellence is accountable for how this plant is organized, how it runs, and how it holds itself to a standard. The role establishes the site’s integrated management system and ISO framework, designs and deploys the plant operating system, builds the training and certification architecture for operators and engineers alike, and leads the continuous improvement program that converts capability into measurable performance.

Responsibilities

• Establish the site’s integrated management system architecture and the ISO framework it operates under, beginning with ISO 9001 and sequencing ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 as the site matures.

• Define the documentation hierarchy — policy, procedure, work instruction, form and record — and own the document control and change governance model that every function writes into.

• Build and lead the internal audit program: audit schedule, auditor qualification and training, finding classification, corrective and preventive action (CAPA) workflow, and closure verification.

• Design the management review cadence and the evidence that feeds it so reviews drive decisions rather than restate metrics.

• Ensure the management system interlocks cleanly with PSM elements — management of change, pre-startup safety review, and operational discipline — rather than running as a parallel structure.

• Prepare and lead the site through certification audits, surveillance audits and customer or regulatory assessments.

• Own the site continuous improvement strategy, portfolio and governance: idea capture, prioritization against business impact, execution discipline, and independent verification of realized benefit.

• Deploy a common structured problem-solving method (DMAIC and A3 or equivalent), train the organization in it, and establish it as the expected response to any significant deviation, defect or loss.

• Lead value stream mapping across the three process areas and the material flow between them; convert current-state findings into a sequenced improvement roadmap with named owners and committed dates.

• Establish the standard work, 5S, visual management and waste-elimination practices that make improvement sustainable rather than episodic.

• Drive measurable results in yield, first-pass quality, OEE, changeover time, scrap and conversion cost, and report benefit realization to site and executive leadership.

• Build and run the internal belt program — Yellow, Green and Black Belt — including project selection, coaching, tollgate review and certification, developing improvement capability inside the workforce rather than relying on external resources.

• Facilitate kaizen events and rapid improvement workshops, and coach area leadership to run them independently over time.

Training, Certification and Workforce Capability

Training and certification is a core deliverable of this role, not an administrative adjunct. The site is hiring the large majority of its workforce from outside the industry, into a process technology with few local analogues. Capability must be built deliberately.

• Operator and technician qualification. Own the site skills and qualification matrix across all production, maintenance and warehouse roles — defining proficiency levels, certification requirements, requalification intervals and the evidence required to sign off each level.

• Structured onboarding and OJT. Build the onboarding architecture and on-the-job training modules, cross-training paths and train-the-trainer program that let the site scale from roughly 70 employees to over 800 without diluting standards.

• Competency assessment. Implement methods to assess knowledge, practical skill and demonstrated proficiency — not attendance — and establish the periodic reassessment cycle that keeps qualifications current.

• Engineering and technical development. Establish the technical competency framework and development path for engineers and technical staff, including certification support (Six Sigma, CMRP, CQE, CRE, PE, CSP), structured rotational exposure across process areas, and mentoring by senior technical staff and process SMEs.

• Frontline leadership development. Build the development program for Shift Leads, Crew Leads and Area Supervisors — the layer this operating model depends on most — covering coaching, standard work adherence, problem solving and conduct of operations.

• Continuous development. Establish the ongoing development cadence beyond initial qualification: refresher training, skill-block progression tied to advancement, and individual development planning in partnership with area leadership and Human Resources.

• Training systems and records. Own the learning management and training records system to ISO- and PSM-compliant standards, with audit-ready traceability from requirement to qualification to reassessment.

• External pipeline. Partner with regional community colleges and workforce development programs to build a durable technician and operator pipeline into the site.

Plant Operating System and Performance Management

• Design and stand up the plant operating system: tiered daily accountability meetings from crew through site leadership, the escalation path between tiers, and the visual management that supports them.

• Define the site OKR/KPI architecture — what is measured, at what level, by whom, and what action each metric is intended to trigger — and cascade it so a frontline board and the site scorecard tell a consistent story.

• Establish operating rhythm and business review cadence, including daily direction setting, we

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