Head of Operations

About Client

A leading global industrial company with a strong portfolio of category-leading brands and a significant North American presence. The business operates across multiple manufacturing, supply chain, warehousing, and distribution sites in the region and is entering an important phase of operational transformation focused on agility, customer service, cost competitiveness, and capability building.

Role Purpose

The Head of Operations will lead end-to-end regional operations across manufacturing, supply chain, warehousing, and distribution for North America. The role is accountable for improving safety, quality, service, cost, inventory, and operational capability, while driving a major transformation of the North American network into a more agile, customer-focused, and performance-driven operation.

Location: USA 

Key Responsibilities

1. Operations Strategy & Network Transformation

• Define and execute the North American operations transformation strategy across manufacturing, supply chain, warehousing, and distribution.

• Lead footprint and network redesign initiatives, including capacity planning, make-buy decisions, site consolidation, service model design, and capital planning.

• Partner with commercial, procurement, quality, finance, HR, and operational excellence teams to ensure operations strategy supports growth, customer service, margin improvement, and risk management. 

2. Manufacturing, Supply Chain & Distribution Execution

• Own end-to-end regional operations performance across production, inventory, logistics, warehousing, distribution, and supply chain execution.

• Improve safety, quality, service, OTIF, lead time, peak-season reliability, cost, productivity, and working capital performance across the regional network.

• Strengthen SIOP / integrated planning discipline, KPI cadence, and corrective action routines to improve demand-supply alignment and operational accountability. 

3. Operational Excellence & Performance Improvement

• Embed Lean, continuous improvement, and a robust operating system across the North American manufacturing and distribution network.

• Lead productivity and cost-improvement initiatives focused on conversion cost reduction, gross margin improvement, inventory optimization, and service reliability.

• Deploy automation, analytics, digital tools, and disciplined governance to improve visibility, decision-making, execution, and measurable transformation outcomes. 

4. Organizational Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead the full North American operations organization across multiple manufacturing sites and distribution locations.

• Build, coach, and develop a high-performing operations leadership team, strengthening succession depth across plant, supply chain, and distribution leadership roles.

• Foster a culture of safety, accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, performance ownership, and cross-functional partnership. 

Desired Candidate Profile 

• Senior operations leader with 15-20 years of experience across manufacturing, supply chain, distribution, and multi-site operations leadership.

• Proven track record leading multiple plants and / or distribution centers with full operational accountability, ideally within a large regional or business-unit scope.

• Strong end-to-end operations experience across manufacturing, supply chain execution, inventory, logistics, warehousing, and distribution.

• Demonstrated success driving footprint transformation, network redesign, Lean / operating-system deployment, productivity improvement, and cost reduction.

• Strong people leader with success in building high-performing teams, developing talent, strengthening succession, and leading cultural transformation.

• Relevant sector experience may include diversified industrials, building products, HVAC, consumer durables, appliances, engineered products, or other complex manufacturing environments.