Elevation Recruitment Group
Interim General Manager
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Interim General Manager – Operational Turnaround
Location: West Yorkshire
Contract: Interim Assignment
A privately owned international engineering group is seeking a highly experienced Interim General Manager to lead the operational turnaround of its principal UK manufacturing business.
The operation generates approximately £35 million in revenue, employs around 400 people, and supplies technically engineered products to demanding global OEM and Tier 1 customers.
The business requires an accomplished turnaround leader who can quickly establish control, restore operational discipline, and address the behaviours currently preventing consistent performance. This is not simply a process-improvement assignment. It requires visible, hands-on leadership capable of changing how people lead, communicate, make decisions, and hold one another accountable.
The Interim General Manager will assume full P&L responsibility and lead a focused programme to improve customer delivery, quality, productivity, cost, and profitability. Central to the assignment will be creating a more accountable, collaborative, and performance-led culture across the leadership team and wider workforce.
The Interim General Manager will be expected to stabilise the operation, identify the root causes of underperformance, and implement a clear, measurable turnaround plan.
The assignment will focus on two closely connected priorities:
- Restoring operational and financial performance.
- Resetting leadership standards, behaviours, and accountability.
The successful executive must be prepared to challenge established ways of working, tackle difficult issues directly, and ensure that commitments translate into action. They will need to create urgency without causing instability and engage the workforce in a credible programme of change.
Key responsibilities
Operational turnaround
- Assume full P&L accountability for the £35 million UK operation.
- Rapidly assess the business across safety, quality, delivery, cost, people, and cash.
- Establish the true operational and financial position, supported by accurate data.
- Develop and execute a prioritised turnaround plan with clear owners, milestones, and measures.
- Restore control across production planning, labour deployment, material availability, and daily execution.
- Improve OTIF, customer responsiveness, and schedule adherence.
- Address quality failures, repeat issues, waste, rework, and the cost of poor quality.
- Improve productivity, manufacturing efficiency, and cost performance.
- Strengthen supply-chain resilience, inventory control, and working-capital management.
- Review organisational structure, management capability, and operational capacity.
- Introduce effective daily, weekly, and monthly operating rhythms.
- Ensure performance issues are escalated early and resolved at the appropriate level.
- Protect customer relationships during the turnaround and rebuild confidence in delivery.
- Provide the group with clear, accurate, and transparent reporting on progress, risks, and recovery actions.
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Leadership, culture, and behaviour
- Set clear expectations for leadership behaviour, ownership, and professional standards.
- Create a culture in which managers take responsibility for outcomes rather than deflecting problems between functions.
- Break down functional silos across operations, engineering, quality, supply chain, and commercial teams.
- Address avoidance, inconsistency, and tolerance of poor performance.
- Establish open, fact-based communication and improve the quality and pace of decision-making.
- Ensure leaders follow through on commitments and are held accountable for delivery.
- Increase management visibility and engagement across the shop floor.
- Build trust with employees while remaining prepared to make difficult people and organisational decisions.
- Coach and develop capable managers, while identifying where leadership changes may be required.
- Improve collaboration between operational functions and customer-facing teams.
- Create greater discipline around meetings, actions, escalation, and performance reviews.
- Recognise positive contribution and reinforce the behaviours required for sustainable improvement.
- Leave behind a stronger, more capable, and more accountable leadership team.
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Candidate profile
We are seeking an experienced Interim General Manager, Managing Director, Site Director, or Operations Director with a strong record of leading operational and cultural turnarounds in complex manufacturing environments.
The successful candidate will demonstrate:
- Full P&L responsibility within a sizeable manufacturing or engineering operation.
- Experience leading businesses or sites employing several hundred people.
- A successful record of stabilising and improving an underperforming operation.
- Evidence of delivering measurable improvements in profitability, productivity, quality, cost, and OTIF.
- Experience changing leadership behaviours and creating stronger accountability.
- The judgement and resilience to make difficult organisational and people decisions.
- Automotive, Tier 1, or similarly demanding high-volume manufacturing experience.
- Strong knowledge of production planning, quality, engineering, supply chain, and continuous improvement.
- The ability to distinguish between process problems, capability gaps, and behavioural issues.
- Strong financial and commercial awareness, including margin, cash, working capital, and cost control.
- Confidence managing demanding customers and resolving escalated performance issues.
- A visible, hands-on, and engaging leadership style.
- The ability to act at pace without relying on short-term actions that cannot be sustained.
- Availability to commit fully to a predominantly site-based interim assignment.
Confidentiality
This appointment is being managed on a strictly confidential basis. The identity of the organisation and detailed circumstances surrounding the assignment will only be disclosed to suitably qualified candidates following an initial assessment and confirmation of confidentiality.
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