Operations Director
Posted
Operations Director
Denison Industries | Denison, Texas
Reports to General Manager | Full-time onsite leadership
Reports to General Manager | Full-time onsite leadership
Position Summary
Lead manufacturing operations, supply chain, production planning, maintenance, and continuous improvement for Denison Industries, an aluminum sand and permanent mold casting business serving aerospace, defense, space, and commercial customers. Convert customer demand into conforming castings delivered on time and at planned cost through capable people, reliable equipment, and disciplined execution.
Lead from the floor with integrity, respect, urgency, and accountability. Develop managers and supervisors while applying People, Quality, Productivity, and Cost (PQPC), Lean Manufacturing, Theory of Constraints (TOC), and Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). Direct reports may include production, maintenance, supply chain, planning, and continuous improvement leaders.
Responsibilities
- Manufacturing execution. Lead core making, molding, melt/pour, shakeout, cutoff, grinding, finishing, and weld-repair execution. Establish realistic schedules, staffing plans, standard work, shift handoffs, and daily performance reviews. Escalate risks early and execute recovery plans.
- Planning and supply chain. Own monthly S&OP and weekly execution planning with Sales, Finance, Engineering, and Quality. Align demand with materials, labor, equipment, yield, outside processing, and constraint capacity. Lead purchasing, inventory control, shipping, receiving, and supplier delivery performance.
- Flow and continuous improvement. Manage plant constraints, including readiness and flow through NDT in partnership with Quality. Establish buffers and priorities; coordinate upstream production to support total throughput. Use kaizen, root-cause analysis, visual management, 5S, and standard work to reduce WIP, lead time, and recurring disruption.
- People and safety. Coach managers, supervisors, and leads; establish clear expectations and fair accountability. Partner with HR and EHS on staffing, training, attendance, retention, succession, and safe work practices. Address hazards promptly and maintain safe equipment and housekeeping standards.
- Quality and operating discipline. Own quality at the source from the operations side, traceability, handling, documentation, and adherence to approved processes. Implement applicable customer, AS9100, Nadcap, ITAR, and controlled-information requirements with the responsible functions. Partner on containment and corrective action; Quality retains independent product-acceptance authority and Engineering owns technical process definition.
- Supply Chain. Lead purchasing, supplier performance, outside processing, inventory control, shipping, and receiving. Ensure material availability, accurate inventory, and supplier delivery; reduce shortages, expedites, excess stock, and supply risk.
Responsibilities Continued
- Maintenance and reliability. Lead maintenance and facilities to improve uptime and preventive-maintenance completion. Prioritize furnaces, cranes, dust collection, compressors, heat-treatment equipment, and other critical assets. Plan repairs, shutdowns, and capital improvements to reduce risk and unplanned downtime.
- Financial and data discipline. Manage labor, overtime, consumables, scrap, rework, outside processing, and controllable spending. Partner with Finance on part-level costs, margin, inventory, and working capital. Support quoting and capital requests with realistic capacity, yield, lead-time, and ROI assumptions. Ensure accurate ERP inventory, labor, routing, and job-status transactions.
Qualifications
- Experience. Significant manufacturing operations leadership experience, including direct responsibility for managers, supervisors, production results, and cross-functional execution in a regulated environment.
- Technical and business capability. Strong working knowledge of foundry process flow, production planning, purchasing, inventory, equipment reliability, and manufacturing costs. Demonstrated improvement in safety, quality, delivery, productivity, and cost using Lean, TOC, daily management, and structured problem solving.
- Leadership. Demonstrated hands-on engagement, sound judgment, clear communication, respectful accountability, and consistent follow-through. Able to develop others, make timely decisions, and protect safety and product integrity under delivery pressure.
- Preferred background. Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Business, or a related field. Aluminum sand casting, permanent mold, machining, or aerospace/defense experience; familiarity with AS9100, Nadcap, ITAR, CMMC/CUI awareness, NDT and weld-repair flow. S&OP implementation, manufacturing ERP experience, and Lean, Six Sigma, or TOC training are preferred.
Key Performance Metrics
Accountable for the following five primary measures, with targets and definitions agreed with the General Manager and supporting functions. Own reporting, data integrity, corrective actions, and sustained improvement.
1. Safety performance. Recordable incident rate for the operations organization; use timely hazard and corrective-action closure as supporting controls.
2. On-time delivery. Percentage of orders or lines shipped by the agreed customer commitment date, using a consistent definition and controlled date changes.
3. Production schedule attainment. Percentage of planned production completed on schedule against a capacity-validated plan, supported by constraint output and readiness measures.
4. Scrap and rework cost. Manufacturing scrap and rework cost against an agreed production-cost basis; identify causes and sustain reductions with Engineering and Quality.
5. Controllable operating cost. Actual controllable spending versus the approved budget, adjusted for production volume and mix, with visibility to labor productivity and overtime.