Director of Operations

Employer Description

Diode Laser Concepts, Inc. is a design and manufacturing company providing our customers unique laser diode solutions to meet their OEM requirements. Located in sunny and beautiful Southern Oregon, the 35yr. company is expanding its workforce to serve its customers in the medical, machine vision, industrial, automotive, oil/gas, and aerospace industries. We offer competitive salaries and benefits packages, flexible work schedules, and a collaborative and energetic work environment.

Overview

The Director of Operations is responsible for leading all site-level operational functions within a highly engineered laser manufacturing environment. This role ensures safe, efficient, and scalable operations aligned with strategic objectives, revenue targets, and EBITDA performance goals. The Director of Operations partners closely with Engineering, Sales, Finance, and senior leadership to drive execution, operational excellence, and continuous improvement across the business. 

Functional Responsibilities:

•    Lead all manufacturing and operational functions to achieve on-time delivery, cost, quality, and safety targets

•    Develop and execute operational strategies aligned with company growth objectives

•    Ensure capacity planning and production scalability to support forecasted demand

•    Drive operational discipline in scheduling, procurement, inventory management, and logistics

•    Develop and maintain effective planning and scheduling of work order flow.

Financial Responsibilities

•    Own operational budget and cost structure

•    Drive gross margin improvement through productivity, yield, and efficiency initiatives

•    Manage labor, overhead, scrap, and inventory performance

•    Partner with Finance to forecast, track, and deliver EBITDA targets

•    Identify and implement cost reduction and value engineering initiatives.

Manufacturing Excellence

•    Execute Lean manufacturing principes and continuous improvement programs

•    Improve capacity, throughput, yields, floor layout, and production line optimization

•    Establish KPI dashboard to drive accountability and decision making

•    Ensure quality and regulatory standards are achieved

•    Utilize processing engineering resources for continuous improvement and SPC.

ERP/MRP and business system acumen

•  Demonstrated proficiency with ERP systems, including the ability to leverage system data to improve operational and business performance

•  Strong understanding of MRP principles, including demand planning, forecasting, material requirements, inventory management, and production scheduling

•  Highly capable in using ERP/MRP and other business systems to analyze data, identify issues, and drive informed decision-making

Supply Chain & Procurement

•    Strengthen supplier performance, cost control, and risk mitigation

•  Streamline JIT delivery strategies, min/max inventory levels, and purchase order lead times and quantities to ensure on time delivery and financial objectives are met

•    Define and maintain a strategy for excellence in supply chain management

Quality & Compliance

•   Ensure quality system, continuous improvement, and training program and objectives are effectively accomplished

•    Maintain compliance with customer, regulatory, and industry standards

•    Assist in ISO 9001:2015 implementation in Operations Function

•  Exercise our Quality tenets of Excellence, Teamwork, Training, Improvement, Critical Thinking, Data Evaluation, People.

Facility & Infrastructure

•    Oversee facility operations, equipment maintenance, and capital planning

•    Ensure infrastructure supports current and projected manufacturing and environmental requirements.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

•    Engineering to ensure seamless NPI transition to production

•    Sales to support forecast and customer commitments

•    Finance on budgeting, forecasting, inventory controls, cost controls

•    Leadership in strategic planning and growth initiatives.

Leadership & Culture

• Exhibit a leadership style complaint with the company values: Love, Integrity, Respect, Trust, Improvement, and Servanthood

•    Create and develop a high-performing operations team

•    Establish and maintain clear accountability and performance expectations

•    Serve as key member of the site leadership team.

Qualifications

•    B.S. in Engineering, Operations or related technical discipline

•    10 years of progressive experience in precision or highly engineered manufacturing environments

•    Experience with laser, photonics, optics, semiconductor, aerospace, or similar high-mix, low-to-medium volume manufacturing preferred

•    Demonstrated ownership of P&L or significant EBITDA responsibility

•    Strong background in Lean, Six Sigma, or operational excellence methodologies

•    Experience managing complex supply chains and technical product lines

•    Proven ability to scale operations while maintaining quality and margin.

Core Competencies

•    Financial acumen and EBITDA-driven mindset.

•    Strategic and systems-level thinking

•    Data driven decision making

•    Cross functional leadership

•    Strong communication and leadership presence

•    Change management capability

•    Values driven attitudes and behavior.

Success is measured by recurring:

•    Exhibition of company values in day-day activities

•    Strong, positive, collaborative Operations Team culture

•    On time delivery performance

•    Financial objectives achieved

•    Yield and productivity gains

•    Successful NPI

•    Robust training program

•    Development of team, individuals, and leadership.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

•    Responsible for transporting items and material up to 25lbs occasionally.

•  Must visually inspect materials to identify nonconformances in shape, finish, and color

•  Ability to stand, walk or sit for extended periods

•    Able to use microscopes

•    Work in a cleanroom environment.

Work Environment: The work environmental characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

•    Standard office and manufacturing environment with moderate noise. Position may involve working with and/or exposure to high voltage and/or laser beams

•    Cleanroom ISO Class 5 and 7

•    Operations Schedule Mon-Thur 0600-1630.

Salary Range: $110,000 to $130,000 based on qualifications