Production Manager

Waters Corporation; Milford (MA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Waters Corporation seeks a dynamic leader to oversee assembly operations within the manufacturing division. This role emphasizes SQDC performance, hands-on leadership across multiple shifts, and a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement.

The successful candidate will manage 35–50 employees, drive lean initiatives, optimize production flow, and ensure adherence to cGMP, ISO standards, and cost targets. Strong communication and change-management skills are essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering or related field; master’s preferred.
• 7+ years of operations experience, preferably in electronics/biotech industries.
• P&L responsibility or equivalent; strong financial KPI understanding.
• Strong CI and safety focus with proven improvement experience.
• Experience with Six Sigma/Lean desirable; project management skills.
• Strong leadership, decisive, and change-management capabilities.
• Excellent organizational, communication, and presentation skills.
• Proficient with SAP and Microsoft applications; BOM and routing knowledge.
• Familiarity with cGMP, ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 highly desired.

Responsibilities

• Lead safety, quality, delivery, and cost performance for ~35–50 staff across shifts.
• Drive continuous improvement and value-stream enhancements.
• Achieve targets for safety, quality, cost, and delivery metrics.
• Develop and implement cost-improvement initiatives and action plans.
• Coach and develop workforce capability and leadership.
• Oversee Lean transformation and future state map execution.
• Ensure headcount planning and resource availability aligns with plans.
• Lead root-cause analysis and Kaizen events with CI partners.

Skills

Leadership

Continuous Improvement

Safety focus

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelors in IE

Tools

SAP

Microsoft Office

Job description

Overview

Waters Corporation is seeking a highly motivated, team-oriented, and dynamic leader to oversee our assembly operations within the manufacturing division. This hands-on leadership role is responsible for excellence in Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost (SQDC) performance. The successful candidate will manage approximately 35-50 employees across multiple shifts including production leads, ensuring the seamless execution of production processes and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement.

Responsibilities

• Champion a physically and mentally safe environment for all employees and coworkers, creating high self-awareness and demonstrated injuries reduction over time until reaching 0 incidents.
• Creating a work environment where employees are energized, excited, and motivated to continuously improve value stream processes, delight our customers, and accomplish both individual and team goals and objectives.
• Meet all performance measures and targets associated with Safety, Quality, Cost, and Delivery.
• Achieve production plans meeting attainment targets, tactical delivery plan to market and ultimately product availability for customers via high production performance.
• Meeting DL: ABS cost as well as achieving expected labor & line efficiency, reaching the absorption targets with the resources required.
• To develop initiatives, cost action or cost improvement towards excellence.
• Develops the technical capability of the workforce and leadership through ongoing training methodology, improving employee’s flexibility and individual capability.
• Sponsored the lean operating system transformation process to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Champion the implementation of a future state map and create a plan for adherence to the new processes.
• Ensure production leadership participation and commitment to the planning handshake. Provide insights into headcounts availability and constraint time so that consensus for the plan be effective.
• Demonstrate, teach, certify, and deploy root cause problem solving, making sure the production team address the problems systematically (5W, 3S). Lead kaizen events as expected in collaboration with CI partners.
• Execute rapid market delivery strategy creating production flow between processes and therefore reduce processing lead times.
• Manage departmental employees establishing clear goals and expectations, providing the resources they need to do their jobs and ensuring their development.
• Consistently apply talent management process, identify key resources, and develop career plans.
• Directly responsible for achieving the Annual Operation Plan (AOP) results and the subsequent performance management of all direct reports.
• Develops complete understanding of the entire process of each product line (current state) including production bottlenecks and risks to the process that could stop or slow process flow.
• Monitor KPIs routinely to ensure current production, quality, and cost targets are achieved using daily management structure to ensure sustainability and develop a performance culture.
• Monitor and evaluate the effect of process changes and adjust as necessary to ensure maximum benefit of any changes.
• Performs other job-related duties assigned.

Qualifications

• A bachelor's degree and/or combination of education in industrial engineering or related experience. A master’s degree in an Engineering, Technical or Business discipline is preferred.
• A minimum of 7 years’ experience in operations is required, preferably in an electronic, medical device or biotechnology industry.
• P&L responsibility for a product line or manufacturing department or site. Thorough understanding of financial metrics and performance KPIs.
• Strong Continuous Improvement and Safety focus, proven experience. Passion for continuous improvement and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated decision making and problem-solving skills. Familiarity with Six Sigma, and Lean methodologies is highly desirable.
• Project Management experience.
• Strong leadership skills, self-directed and the ability to make independent decisions and influence change management.
• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, verbal, written and presentation skills.
• Proficiency with SAP and Microsoft applications required.
• Familiar with Bill of Materials (BoM) and Production Routings.
• Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts and drive corrective actions.
• Familiarity with cGMP, ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 is highly desired.

Company Description

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is a global leader in analytical instruments, separations technologies, and software, serving the life, materials, food, and environmental sciences for over 65 years. Our Company helps ensure the efficacy of medicines, the safety of food and the purity of water, and the quality and sustainability of products used every day. In over 100 countries, our 7,600+ passionate employees collaborate with customers in laboratories, manufacturing sites, and hospitals to accelerate the benefits of pioneering science.

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our core values at Waters Corporation. It benefits our employees, our products, our customers and our community. Waters complies with all applicable federal, state,and local laws. Qualified applicants are considered without regard to sex, race, color, ancestry, national origin, citizenship status, religion, age, marital status (including civil unions), military service, veteran status, pregnancy (including childbirth and related medical conditions), genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, legally recognized disability, domestic violence victim status,or any other characteristic protected by law. Waters is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. All hiring decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.

Key Words

Leadership, Agile, Lean, Continuous Improvement, Manufacturing, Production, Line Efficiency, Operations, Value Stream Manager.