Manufacturing Operations Manager

Company Description:

The Strainrite Companies is a family-owned manufacturer of high-quality liquid filtration products with over 48 years of industry experience and a global customer base across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Strainrite’s filtration solutions support diverse industries including pharmaceutical, paints, inks & coatings, food & beverage, specialty chemicals, electronics & data centers, and more. The company’s success is driven by a strong commitment to innovation, ISO9001-accredited, silicone-free manufacturing facilities, and products designed for use in accordance with cGMP. Strainrite emphasizes collaborative, consultative partnerships with clients, tailoring solutions through comprehensive needs assessment and ongoing customer-supplier communication. This approach enables Strainrite to deliver custom filtration solutions for complex and critical applications worldwide.

Role Positioning:

This is primarily an operations and people-leadership position. The successful candidate should understand manufacturing technology and engineering principles well enough to identify improvement opportunities, establish priorities, and direct the appropriate internal or external resources. This is not intended to be a hands-on engineering, machine-design, or maintenance-technician role.

Position Summary:

We are seeking an experienced Manufacturing Operations Manager to lead our production organization and oversee the safe, efficient, and consistent execution of daily manufacturing operations. This individual will develop production employees and supervisors, improve operational performance, coordinate labor and capacity, and ensure customer requirements are met.

The ideal candidate will combine strong manufacturing leadership with a practical understanding of equipment, processes, and continuous improvement. An engineering background is highly valued because it can help the leader recognize technical constraints and guide top-down process improvements, but the position is centered on operational leadership rather than hands-on engineering.

Core Responsibilities:

Manufacturing Leadership

• Lead daily production operations with clear expectations for safety, quality, productivity, and accountability.
• Manage and develop supervisors, team leads, and production employees.
• Build workforce flexibility through training, cross-training, and succession planning.

Production Planning and Execution

• Coordinate labor, equipment, and materials to meet production schedules and customer commitments.
• Monitor capacity, work-in-process, overtime, and schedule performance.
• Work across departments to resolve production constraints and changing priorities.

Process and Continuous Improvement

• Identify and prioritize opportunities to improve workflow, capacity, quality, labor efficiency, and cost.
• Lead continuous-improvement initiatives and establish documented, repeatable production methods.
• Coordinate internal and external technical resources to implement equipment and process improvements.

Safety, Quality, and Equipment Reliability

• Maintain a safe, compliant manufacturing environment.
• Partner with Quality to investigate defects, scrap, rework, and customer complaints.
• Oversee corrective actions, preventive-maintenance priorities, and equipment reliability.

Performance and Cost Management

• Establish and monitor key manufacturing performance indicators.
• Address performance gaps and deliver measurable operational improvements.
• Develop budgets and business cases for staffing, equipment, automation, and facility investments.

Required Qualifications

• Seven or more years of manufacturing experience, including at least five years leading production teams.
• Strong knowledge of production planning, labor management, quality, equipment reliability, and continuous improvement.
• Experience using ERP/MRP systems and production data to manage performance.
• Strong leadership, communication, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, manufacturing, operations management, business, or a related field.
• Technical or engineering experience within a manufacturing environment.
• Experience with Lean manufacturing and ISO-based quality systems.
• Experience implementing capital-equipment or process-improvement projects.

Measures of Success:

Success in this position will be reflected in a safer and more accountable production environment, stronger frontline leadership, reliable schedule performance, improved employee capabilities, better use of operational data, fewer recurring quality and equipment problems, and measurable gains in productivity and manufacturing cost.

Salary Range: $140,000-$150,000

Benefits:

• 401(k) matching
• Health insurance
• Dental insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Flexible spending account
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Professional development assistance
• Retirement plan
• Tuition reimbursement
• Vision insurance
• Company outings
• Employee Appreciation (monthly)