Manager, Suspension Manufacturing
Description
Summary:
The Manager, Suspension Manufacturing leads day-to-day production operations for their area of the plant, overseeing shift and team leads as well as production associates to drive output, quality, and safety results. This is a mid-level operations leadership role requiring strong people-management experience, sound judgment, and the ability to keep a department running efficiently in a fast-paced manufacturing environment. The ideal candidate combines hands-on shop floor credibility with the leadership skills needed to manage teams, uphold quality standards, and support continuous improvement across ICON's suspension systems and off-road performance product lines.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
- Own daily, weekly, and monthly production planning to meet demand forecasts and customer delivery commitments
- Manage workflow and staffing across multiple production lines/cells, and training employees to reallocate labor and resources in real time to hit targets
- Set and monitor Overall Equipment Effectiveness, throughput, scrap rate, and on-time-delivery metrics; report performance to leadership
- In conjunction with Engineering, drive root-cause analysis on production shortfalls, quality escapes, and downtime events, and implement corrective actions
- Partner with supply chain and materials planning to prevent stockouts and manage WIP levels
- Coordinate maintenance schedules with the facilities/maintenance team to minimize unplanned downtime
- Directly supervise shift leads, team leads, and production associates. Set expectations and assist in achieving them.
- Recruit, hire, onboard, and train shop floor staff in partnership with HR
- Conduct performance reviews, manage disciplinary actions, and handle employee relations issues in partnership with HR
- Build training and cross-skilling programs to increase workforce flexibility and reduce single points of failure
- Ensure all products meet ICON's quality specifications and enforce inspection/QC checkpoints throughout production
- Own safety performance for the department: enforce OSHA compliance, lead incident investigations, and drive corrective/preventive actions
- Conduct regular safety audits and toolbox talks; champion a proactive safety culture
- Lead lean manufacturing initiatives (5S, kaizen, value stream mapping) to reduce waste and improve efficiency
- Identify and lead capital or process improvement projects, building business cases with ROI justification
- In partnership with HR, standardize work instructions and best practices across shifts
- Partner with Engineering on new product introductions (NPI) and manufacturability feedback
- Work with Quality Assurance on non-conformance resolution and process audits
- Collaborate with Planning/Scheduling to align capacity with sales demand
- Represent the shop floor perspective in leadership and operations meetings
