Operational Excellence Lead — Continuous Improvement

BARNES; West Chester Township (OH); On-site; USD 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

BARNES is seeking a Continuous Improvement (CI) Manager to drive step changes in performance at our West Chester, OH facility. You will partner with site leadership to deploy CI principles, lead high-impact projects, and ensure the VITAL Operating System is deployed and sustained across operations.

You will build CI capabilities, coach staff, and collaborate across operations, engineering, quality, finance and safety to improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.

Qualifications

• 5+ years delivering measurable improvements in business or operations.
• Hands-on Lean, Theory of Constraints, Kaizen with certifications preferred.
• Proven ability to lead across multiple levels of the organization.
• Strong understanding of operational excellence in manufacturing/industrial environments.
• Analytical, data-driven problem solving with strong attention to detail.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and interpersonal skills.
• Project Management certification preferred, or strong PM background.
• Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Act as strategic business partner to site leadership to identify opportunities for performance improvement.
• Analyze processes and workflows to develop improvement strategies with measurable results.
• Lead deployment, sustainment, and evolution of the VITAL OS at the site.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise CI standards and methodologies.
• Identify, prioritize, and lead high-impact CI projects from concept through sustainment.
• Build structured CI frameworks, governance, and standard work.
• Train, coach, and mentor employees in CI methodologies and tools.
• Partner with operations, engineering, quality, supply chain, and finance to drive cross-functional improvements.
• Facilitate workshops, kaizen events, training and problem-solving sessions.
• Use data-driven methods to track performance and validate outcomes; develop KPIs.
• Stay current with industry trends and best practices in CI and operational excellence.

Skills

Continuous improvement

Lean

Kaizen

Data analysis

Project management

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Engineering, Operations, or Supply Chain

Tools

VITAL Operating System

Data analytics tools

Job description

BARNES is seeking a Continuous Improvement (CI) Manager to drive step changes in performance at our West Chester, OH facility. You will partner with site leadership to deploy CI principles, lead high-impact projects, and ensure the VITAL Operating System is deployed and sustained across operations.

You will build CI capabilities, coach staff, and collaborate across operations, engineering, quality, finance and safety to improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction.