Senior Executive, Continuous Improvement

Role & responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

1. Continuous Improvement

• Map plant losses, convert them to cost, and prioritise the improvement portfolio by impact-to-effort.
• Lead kaizens using structured methodology: 5-Why, PDCA, DMAIC, 7 QC tools, Ishikawa, SMED, Poka-Yoke, Value Stream Mapping.
• Drive shop-floor basics 5S, standard work, visual management, OPL/SOP discipline — across cabinet foaming, assembly, and sub-assembly lines.
• Prepare the plant for internal and external audits, model-area development, and gap closure plans.
• Cascade continuous improvement capability to line supervisors and operators through structured training and coaching; grow the kaizen funnel (suggestion scheme, quick kaizens, standard kaizens, major kaizens).

2. Business Analytics & Performance Management

• Build and own plant performance dashboards covering OEE, availability, performance, scrap and rework, line balancing, throughput, conversion cost per unit, and manpower productivity.
• Convert raw SAP / ERP manual line data into a single, reliable source of truth; identify and fix data-quality gaps at source.
• Perform root-cause and variance analysis on production plan vs. actual, cost vs. budget, and loss trends; translate findings into specific, owner-assigned corrective actions.
• Quantify the financial benefit of every improvement project and validate savings with Plant Finance before booking.
• Support the annual budgeting and cost-reduction target-setting exercise with bottom-up, loss-based analytics.
• Publish daily / weekly / monthly performance reviews for the plant leadership team and represent the plant in regional and corporate operations reviews.

3. Project Management

• Manage a portfolio of 10–20 concurrent improvement projects — define charter, scope, baseline, target, milestones, resources, and benefit realisation for each.
• Run structured governance: weekly project reviews, risk and issue logs, escalation to the steering committee.
• Coordinate cross-functional teams spanning Production, Maintenance, Quality, Manufacturing Engineering, Supply Chain, Safety, HR, and Finance.
• Manage CAPEX and OPEX improvement proposals — business case, payback, IRR, approval routing, and post-implementation benefit tracking.
• Ensure sustenance: standardise, horizontally deploy successful kaizens to other lines and sister plants, and audit for reversion.

4. AI & Digital Enablement

• Identify and pilot AI / advanced-analytics use cases on the shop floor — predictive maintenance, demand and production forecasting, computer-vision quality inspection, anomaly detection in process parameters, and automated defect classification.
• Use AI-assisted tools (LLM copilots, automated document and report generation, code assistance) to accelerate analysis, reporting, and SOP creation.
• Partner with the Digital / IT team to specify requirements, run pilots, evaluate vendors, and scale successful use cases.
• Automate recurring manual reporting through Power Query, macros, or scripting — with a clear target of reducing manual reporting effort year on year.

5. Safety, Quality & Compliance

• Ensure all improvement activity complies with plant EHS standards, statutory requirements, and Whirlpool quality systems.
• Embed safety and quality gates into every kaizen; no productivity gain is accepted at the cost of safety or product quality.

Required Skills & Competencies

• Hands-on continuous improvement experience in a manufacturing plant. Demonstrable, quantified savings delivered. Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification preferred.
• Strong analytical and problem-structuring ability. Comfortable working with large, messy operational datasets and converting them into decision-ready insight.
• Proven track record of managing multiple concurrent projects to committed timelines and benefit targets
• Practical, working exposure to AI tools in a professional context — using LLMs for analysis and automation.
• Able to present crisply to plant leadership and to coach on the shop floor with equal ease. Strong written documentation discipline
• 2-3 years of experience in project management/business analytics.

Preferred candidate profile

Perks and benefits