Senior Manager, Continuous Improvement & Lean Initiatives

DSV Road GmbH; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 113,000 - 141,000; Full time

Job summary

DSV is seeking a Senior Manager, Continuous Improvement to lead the CIP across warehousing, transportation, and freight forwarding. You will drive end-to-end optimization using Lean, Six Sigma, and 3PL best practices, with responsibility for 2-3 junior CI professionals as the program expands.

The role requires strong analytical and operational leadership, delivery of ROI‑driven improvements, and collaboration across IT, engineering, and customer teams. Travel may be required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Business, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience in continuous improvement, industrial engineering, or operations roles within 3PL, logistics, warehousing, freight forwarding, or manufacturing environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading Lean/Six Sigma projects (Green Belt or Black Belt certification preferred) with quantifiable results.
• Strong working knowledge of warehouse and transportation operations, WMS/TMS systems, and labor management systems.
• Proficiency in process mapping, time studies, statistical analysis, and improvement tools (5S, Kaizen, DMAIC, PDCA, Value Stream Mapping, Root Cause Analysis).
• Strong project management skills with ability to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously across sites.
• Experience in a multi-site or regional CI role within a global 3PL or logistics network.
• Experience supporting new site launches, customer onboarding, or network design projects.
• Familiarity with automation/robotics evaluation (AS/RS, AMRs, sortation) and digital transformation initiatives in logistics.
• Operational and financial acumen (cost-to-serve, labor economics)
• Bias for action with attention to sustainable, data-driven results
• Travel Requirements

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the site/regional CIP strategy, including the pipeline of kaizen events, DMAIC projects, and rapid-improvement initiatives.
• Establish and track a savings/benefit pipeline (cost avoidance, productivity gains, quality improvements) with clear ROI documentation.
• Build and maintain a CIP governance cadence (idea intake, prioritization, project charters, stage-gate reviews, close-out) tied to business KPIs.
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement through training, coaching, and visible leadership at all levels of the operation.
• Process Optimization
• Conduct time studies, process mapping (VSM), and root cause analysis across warehousing (receiving, put away, picking, packing, VAS, shipping) and transportation/freight forwarding workflows.
• Redesign standard operating procedures (SOPs) to eliminate waste, reduce variability, and improve throughput, labor productivity, and space/asset utilization.
• Partner with Industrial Engineering to develop and validate labor standards, engineered labor standards (ELS), and slotting/layout optimization.
• Identify and lead automation, WMS/TMS system enhancement, and technology adoption opportunities that support scalable process improvement.
• Data & Performance Management
• Build dashboards and reporting to track OTIF, productivity (UPH/CPH), cost-per-unit, dock-to-stock, order accuracy, safety incidents, and other operational KPIs.
• Use statistical analysis to identify variation, bottlenecks, and improvement opportunities across sites.
• Prepare and present improvement business cases and results to site leadership, regional leadership, and customers as needed (QBRs).
• Stakeholder & Change Management
• Act as the primary liaison between operations, engineering, IT, and customer-facing teams on improvement initiatives.
• Lead cross-functional improvement teams and manage change through structured communication, training, and sustainment plans.
• Support new site start-ups and customer implementations by embedding CI principles and best-practice process design from day one.
• Facilitate Lean/Six Sigma training (Green Belt/Yellow Belt level) for site operations teams to build internal CI capability.
• Develop and maintain a network-wide playbook of standard processes, layouts, and best practices for replication across sites.
• Conduct site assessments/audits against operational excellence standards and drive corrective action plans.
• Benchmark performance across internal sites and against industry standards to identify improvement targets.
• Travel Requirements
• Ability to travel extensively based on business needs.
• Expected travel up to three weeks per month when priorities require on-site support, project implementation, or business transformation activities.

Skills

Lean Six Sigma

WMS/TMS knowledge

Process mapping

Time studies

Statistical analysis

Root Cause Analysis

DMAIC/PDCA

Value Stream Mapping

Project management

Multi-site coordination

Stakeholder management

Change leadership

Communication with leadership

Industrial engineering

Education

Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Business, or related field

Tools

Power BI

Tableau

SQL

Excel

WMS/TMS systems

Job description

DSV is seeking a Senior Manager, Continuous Improvement to lead the CIP across warehousing, transportation, and freight forwarding. You will drive end-to-end optimization using Lean, Six Sigma, and 3PL best practices, with responsibility for 2-3 junior CI professionals as the program expands.

The role requires strong analytical and operational leadership, delivery of ROI‑driven improvements, and collaboration across IT, engineering, and customer teams. Travel may be required.