President Jobs

President

RHH 202306

MUST HAVES:

• Aerospace and Defense experience
• Relocation to Colorado
• Multi-site

The Company:

Owned by a family office-backed private equity sponsor, our client is a leader in high precision and top-quality manufacturing of metal components for the aerospace and defense industry. With three locations in Michigan, Colorado and Wyoming, our client operates in a non-union environment. Their capabilities are broad, and they can manage any project start to finish, regardless of complexity. The various regional cultures are technically astute with significant product knowledge, and each possesses a do whatever it takes attitude to get a job done.

The Opportunity:

Our client is seeking a President empowered to lead the organization into the next phase of growth and reinvigorate the culture. An executive presence with a hands-on approach, the President must have a demonstrated ability to create trust and build strong relationships with key management team members. In addition to building and nurturing internal teams, it is essential for this position to have a strong technical background to maintain the long-term customer relationships in this critical component manufacturing environment.

This position reports to the Board of Directors with seven (7) direct reports.

Job Definition/Characteristics:

The ideal candidate will be an experienced and proven operations leader who is highly knowledgeable in low volume manufacturing and/or precision engineering of metal components and will be commercially astute, understanding the customer markets. As the new President transitions into the company, he/she will create and develop the business plans for customer outreach to ensure a seamless changeover occurs. This is a highly customer focused position and requires a keen commercial business mind that puts customer needs first. The successful candidate will play a key role in the integration of various cultures. He/she will “knit the culture together” to act as one united team to have a positive shared performance impact on the overall business.

Summary of Key Responsibilities:

This position will bring a strong voice into the company while working closely with Ownership and the Management Team to establish long-range goals, tactical operating objectives, and value accretive expansion.

• Take-charge leader who can create and manage operational processes and hold teams accountable to established goals. Works with Human Resources to hire, train, evaluate, manage staff and resolve plant personnel issues.
• Extensive sales and customer management; ensures that, as the company grows, manufacturing capabilities meet or exceed all industry and customer requirements for cost, quality, and responsiveness.
• Profit and loss responsibility for multiple operating locations. Manages the financial performance of all operations, meeting the annual budget and profit plan.
• Establishes, maintains, and optimizes all operating policies and systems and ensures the effective deployment of these policies and systems. Resourceful, figure-it-out-and-get-it-done mentality, with a history of creating lean, successful organizations.
• Frequent interaction with customers to ensure delivery standards and negotiated terms. Responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with key customers.
• Operation reviews and confer with plant management, technical or administrative staff to resolve production or processing problems. Select, lead, and support the development of people. Approachable and understands the value of teamwork to increase productivity and overall business performance.
• Provide direction, development, strategic planning and leadership for all manufacturing operations.
• Lead and mentor the existing Management Team. Organize resources to get things done, while using them effectively and efficiently. Set clear expectations, design practical processes and procedures that ensure accountability through a workable performance management (MBO) system.
• Launching multiple product applications in a low volume manufacturing environment. In conjunction with the plant management team, set operational and/or performance goals for each department which are achievable and tied to long-term goals. Train/monitor the team’s utilization of established systems and processes to track and optimize productivity and standards, metrics and performance targets to ensure attractive return on assets.

Leadership and Management:

• Supreme diplomat; Effectively build relationships and trust with a wide range of individuals internally and externally. Influential, with an approachable style that inspires confidence and empowerment within the teams.
• Participate on the Board of directors and advise the Board on key planning issues and make recommendations on important business decisions.
• Embrace challenges; must be flexible and adaptable, works comfortably with individuals and cross functional teams. Possess impeccable integrity and ethics. Respectful of others and respected by peers. Honest, dependable, authentic, and trustworthy.
• Cross functional leadership: responsible for short and long term strategies, planning, budgets, expense control and formulating goals to optimize and grow the business. Ability to create Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to monitor, maintain and optimize the overall operations.
• Passionate for continuous improvement that enhances plant through-put, quality, customer expectations and maximizes company profitability. Develop and implement processes, procedures, and metrics that drive accountability; define and communicate the responsibilities, lines of authority and accountability of all direct team members to ensure all are in agreement and understanding; Provides consistent, on-going, comprehensive communications including but not limited to goal attainment, continuous improvement initiatives, customer satisfaction, and overall company performance.
• Coaching and mentoring the operations team; effective at setting, evaluating and inspiring individual and team goals that develop people to promote a positive culture.
• Direct leadership, management, and mentorship of the company’s management team. Possesses well developed negotiation skills and is able to resolve conflict and facilitate negotiations with tact and diplomacy.

The Requirements:

• Executive presence with high emotional intelligence; strongly demonstrated leadership and communication skills involving employees, customers, and peers.
• Relationship driven; diplomatic trust builder within a well-established and highly skilled team. Cross functional leadership: Proven creative problem-solving skills with a drive to create “solutions”.
• 25% Travel required.
• Proven track record as President, Chief Operating Officer, Vice President of Operations, or Vice President/General Manager.
• Leader and mentor; Lead and support the development of people. Easily recognized by employees as approachable and someone who understands the value of teamwork.
• Broad knowledge of quality systems including ISO, ITAR, Continuous Improvement, Kaizen, 5-S, Lean Manufacturing, KANBAN, etc.
• Value-add, customer-driven leader who is supremely commercially minded.
• 10 years of experience in complex component manufacturing positions within the aerospace and defense industries. 10 years of direct plant leadership. Sales experience at some level is required.
• Detail oriented with strong strategic leadership and project management skills; ability to prioritize and act with a sense of urgency. Mergers and acquisitions experience a plus.
• Calm demeanor with a midwestern work ethic, e.g., “roll-up your sleeves” leader, with a proven “take-charge” record of accomplishment.
• 8+ years of senior management experience involving full P&L, balance sheet, capital structures and growth responsibilities.

Education:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Manufacturing, Engineering or Business is required; MBA/MS or ME is preferred.
• Experience with Made2Manage ERP Platform is a plus.