INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT & HR EXPERTS ACROSS THE PLASTICS, PACKAGING, SPECIALITY CHEMICALS, LIFE SCIENCES, BIOPOLYMER, FOOD ADDITIVES & INGREDIENTS, ENERGY AND RECYCLING SECTORS SINCE 1975.

Plastics manufacturer

Based in West Lothian

Job ref: CST/65166
Salary: Attractive – commensurate with experience

The Company

Our client is a well-established and respected plastics manufacturer with a healthy level of profitability. Now private equity backed following many years of family ownership, it is in a good position to continue its growth and is seeking an operations leader who can take the business through its next stage of development, leading the factory towards a more structured, KPI-driven, process oriented and customer-focused environment.

Primary role

Part of the senior leadership team, working closely with the Managing Director.

• Develop and implement a manufacturing strategy and operational plan that brings about a more agile, structured and professional model in line with the company’s business objectives.
• Provide leadership to develop Operational Excellence initiatives through the application of good practice manufacturing techniques.
• Act as the operational counterpart to the Managing Director, owning the manufacturing agenda and translating operational performance into clear financial and commercial terms for the leadership team and investors.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate current manufacturing practice and provide a vision for culture change using modern manufacturing techniques.
• Develop and implement manufacturing processes to deliver improvements with efficiencies, increased agility and capacity, waste reduction and drive a culture that seeks ‘best-in-class’ production performance.
• Ensure that Health & Safety is core to the factory’s operations and champion a ‘safety first’ culture.
• Lead the production team by example to produce and deliver products to customer expectations and establish processes/controls in key deliverable areas such as housekeeping, waste reduction, capacity utilisation and production efficiencies.
• Mentors and empower direct reports to drive process improvement and process ownership.
• Represent the production function on the SLT, providing direction and leadership on manufacturing performance along with regular progress reports to key stakeholders.
• Provide leadership for problem resolution.
• Develop and manage the manufacturing budget.
• Design and embed a KPI framework (e.g. OEE, scrap, OTIF, labour efficiency, cost per unit) supported by visual management and a structured daily and weekly performance review cadence.
• Establish robust standard operating procedures, work instructions and document control, ensuring consistent, auditable ways of working across all shifts.
• Own compliance across quality, health & safety and environmental standards (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001), leading customer and third-party audits and driving corrective actions through to closure.
• Introduce planned preventive maintenance and tooling management to improve asset reliability and reduce unplanned downtime.
• Review organisational structure, roles and capability, introducing skills matrices, training plans and performance management to build a team fit for the next stage of growth.
• Leads the team to improve, automate, and streamline current operations procedures to maximise contribution to the profitability of the firm and longer-term business goals.