Continuous Improvement Manager

Very Good Manufacturing; Fort Worth (TX); On-site; USD 86,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

PTO

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Discretionary bonus

Job summary

Very Good Manufacturing seeks a Continuous Improvement Manager to optimize bottling and canning lines in Fort Worth, TX. The role reports to the founders and may lead a Controls Engineer and a Process Improvement Specialist.

You will drive change for faster, steadier lines and manage improvement projects from concept to installation. Expect hands-on work on line changes, spend-limiting upgrades, and data-driven tracking using Excel or Sheets.

Qualifications

• You have personally made a line or a process measurably faster or steadier.
• You can build the tracker yourself in Excel or Sheets.
• You can influence people who don’t report to you to change how they work.
• You write concise, 1-page sequences and capital requests for the founders.
• You’re diligent—obtain three quotes before spending and ask questions until the problem is understood.
• You’re on the production floor for much of the day, including first and second shifts.

Responsibilities

• Know where the hours go on all four lines and summarize by line and shift.
• Disassemble changeovers to reduce time and shift constraints.
• Lead root-cause analysis with maintenance and quality; verify fixes hold over time.
• Decide which standards exist, prioritize lines, and compare written vs. real time.
• Create a ranked improvement list with dollars or hours to justify projects.
• Lead the group by coordinating with the Controls Engineer and line leads.

Skills

Process improvement

Project leadership

Data tracking

Education

Engineering degree

Extensive packaging-line experience

Tools

Excel/Sheets

PLC/HMI knowledge

Job description

We blend, bottle, and can distilled spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails for the biggest beverage-alcohol brands in the world, names you’d recognize from any back bar. Four lines run under one roof, two bottling and two canning, across two shifts. What runs on them changes constantly: a bottled whiskey this week, a canned cocktail the next.

Shift managers run the floor and a planner runs the schedule. This seat is pointed at the lines themselves: the changeovers, the startups, the stops, and the hours they take. With a product mix like ours, that is where the next big gains are, and this is the first role we’ve built to go after them full-time.

It’s a new role and it reports to the founders. Two other roles sit in the group with you, a Controls Engineer and a Process Improvement Specialist. Depending on what you bring, you lead them from day one or you grow into it. We’d rather fit the seat to the person than hold out for a resume.

Continuous Improvement Manager

$86,250 to $140,250 per year

Full-time, on-site in Fort Worth, Texas

About the role

We blend, bottle, and can distilled spirits and ready-to-drink cocktails for the biggest beverage-alcohol brands in the world, names you’d recognize from any back bar. Four lines run under one roof, two bottling and two canning, across two shifts. What runs on them changes constantly: a bottled whiskey this week, a canned cocktail the next.

Shift managers run the floor and a planner runs the schedule. This seat is pointed at the lines themselves: the changeovers, the startups, the stops, and the hours they take. With a product mix like ours, that is where the next big gains are, and this is the first role we’ve built to go after them full-time.

It’s a new role and it reports to the founders. Two other roles sit in the group with you, a Controls Engineer and a Process Improvement Specialist. Depending on what you bring, you lead them from day one or you grow into it. We’d rather fit the seat to the person than hold out for a resume.

What you’ll do

• Know where the hours go on all four lines. Run time, stops, changeovers, rejects, by line and by shift. Start from what the leads already record and build it into one picture, in a form that holds up at the end of a long night. The output is a number the founders see every week: where the hours went on each line, and what you’re doing about the biggest one.
• Take the changeovers apart. With our mix, changeovers are the biggest lever in the building. Film them, time them, move every step you can to before the line stops, stage the parts and tooling, and write the sequence down with the crew that runs it. Then run it until the new time holds on a shift you aren’t standing on.
• Kill the repeat stops. When a line keeps stopping for the same reason, say a capper that jams or a labeler that drifts, you lead the root-cause work with the lead, maintenance, and quality. A month later you go back and check the fix held. If it didn’t, you reopen it.
• Decide which standards exist, and whether they hold. Your Process Improvement Specialist writes the procedures and checklists and teaches them at the line. You decide which ones matter most and which lines get them first, then you compare the written time to the real time. When they don’t match, you look at the standard first.
• Keep a ranked list, and make the case for the money. A short list of what’s worth fixing, with the hours or the dollars next to each item, that you bring to the founders. A lot of fixes cost nothing. Some need a part, a conveyor change, or real capital, and then you write the ask, get three quotes, and own the project through install and startup.
• Lead the group. A lot of these fixes come down to a program change or a new sensor, so you set what the Controls Engineer takes on first. Line leads learn the methods by working real problems next to you. Over time the floor handles its own small fixes and your group spends its weeks on the big ones.

What it takes

• You have personally made a line or a process measurably faster or steadier, and you can walk us through the before and after numbers, because you did it and not because you oversaw it.
• You can build the tracker yourself, this week, in Excel or Sheets. No IT project.
• You get people who don’t report to you to change how they work. Usually by showing them at the line that the new way is easier.
• You write short and clear: a one-page sequence, a capital ask, a project summary the founders can read in two minutes.
• You’re diligent in your own work. You get three quotes before you spend money. You ask questions until you understand the problem, which sometimes means asking the same one twice. And you’ll say no to a project that hasn’t earned its spot.
• You’re on the production floor for much of the day, with regular time on second shift.

Either end of this works: an engineering degree and a couple of years, or six or eight years of doing this on packaging lines without one. Tell us which you are and we’ll scope the seat to it.

Helps, but not required: high-speed bottling or canning · filler, capper, and labeler mechanics · Lean or Six Sigma training · a TPM or autonomous-maintenance rollout · capital project management · PLCs and HMIs · spirits, wine, or beer · Spanish.

It doesn’t have to have been a bottling line. If you’ve cut the turnaround on an aircraft, the ticket times in a kitchen, or the load-in and load-out on a tour, and you can show us the numbers, we want to hear from you.

Compensation

$86,250 to $140,250 per year depending on experience, plus a discretionary performance bonus. PTO, medical and dental. Full-time, salaried, on-site in Fort Worth. You’ll be in early for first-shift startups and on second shift regularly, and you set your schedule around the floor, not a desk.

Why join Very Good

• We have fun doing cool stuff. You’ll work on industry-leading alcohol innovation projects with brands people know around the world. Your friends will be impressed.
• Nearly every manager in this building started here at entry level. We promote from within and we cross-train on purpose. The time you win back is the most visible work in the building, and the founders read it every week.
• Well-scoped improvement work gets funded. If the numbers hold up, we pay for the people or the equipment it takes.