Operations Manager

Benefits

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Founded over 35 years ago, First Quality is a family-owned company that has grown from a small business in McElhattan, Pennsylvania into a group of companies, employing over 5,000 team members, while maintaining our family values and entrepreneurial spirit. With corporate offices in New York and Pennsylvania and 8 manufacturing campuses across the U.S. and Canada, the companies within the First Quality group produce high-quality personal care and household products for large retailers and healthcare organizations. Our personal care and household product portfolio includes baby diapers, wipes, feminine pads, paper towels, bath tissue, adult incontinence products, laundry detergents, fabric finishers, and dishwash solutions. In addition, we manufacture certain raw materials and components used in the manufacturing of these products, including flexible print and packaging solutions. Guided by our values of humility, unity, and integrity, we leverage advanced technology and innovation to drive growth and create new opportunities. At First Quality, you'll find a collaborative environment focused on continuous learning, professional development, and our mission to Make Things Better®. We are seeking an Operations Manager for our First Quality Print & Packaging facility located in Anderson, SC. The Operations Manager leads day-to-day manufacturing across FQP&P's extrusion, flexographic printing, lamination, slitting, and warehouse operations, and is the plant's primary driver of continuous improvement, digital transformation, and operational standardization. Reporting to the Director of Operations, this role is accountable for safety, quality, on-time delivery, and cost performance today, and for building the people, process, technology, and data capabilities that will scale FQP&P through its next phase of growth. This is a hands-on leadership role in a 24/7 SQF-certified flexible packaging operation. The right leader thrives in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment, challenges the status quo, and actively partners with First Quality's enterprise Transformation Office to advance automation, analytics, and standard daily management across the plant. Primary responsibilities include: Lead & Develop People Lead, mentor, and develop department leaders, shift supervisors, and production teams across the plant. Model FQ core values; build a high-performing, safety-first culture where team members feel valued, accountable, and empowered to challenge the status quo. Own performance management, succession planning, and talent development, including deliberate build of digital, automation, and data fluency across the floor. Foster tight cross-functional partnership with Maintenance, Engineering, Quality, Scheduling, HR, and Procurement. Improve the Process Drive continuous improvement through Lean, Six Sigma, and 5S; positioned not as initiatives, but as how we work. Eliminate ineffective legacy practices; adopt and contribute to enterprise process standards where standardization creates leverage across First Quality's plant network. Implement and sustain Daily Management System disciplines: daily direction setting, centerlines, clean-to-inspect, breakdown elimination, master production schedule adherence, defect handling, and planned stops. Partner with the FQ Transformation Office on process redesign, simplification, and cross-plant standardization initiatives. Execute cost-reduction, yield-improvement, and capacity-expansion projects with clear ROI and disciplined benefit tracking. Advance Technology & Automation Champion the plant's technology roadmap in partnership with IT, OT/IS, and the Physical Automation leader - including MES, vision systems, PLC integration, and robotics. Identify, pilot, and scale automation opportunities across extrusion, print, lamination, slitting, and warehouse. Drive adoption of enterprise tools (SAP, MES, Hexagon, POKA, Intelex, ETQ, WinSPC) and evaluate new tools that create competitive advantage. Stay current on flexible packaging industry technology - Industry 4.0, smart-factory, and the emerging role of generative and agentic AI in manufacturing and translate that awareness into concrete pilots. Partner with Engineering on capital project scoping, justification, and execution. Drive Decisions with Data Own the plant's KPI framework - OEE, throughput, scrap, on-time delivery, inventory accuracy, quality defect rates, and safety leading and lagging indicators - with visible performance management at every level. Demand and model data fluency: read dashboards, challenge data quality, use analytics to drive root cause, and hold the team to the same standard. Partner with the enterprise Data & Analytics, Power BI / Qlik, and Solution Engineering teams to build decision-quality reporting and advanced / predictive analytics use cases. Manage departmental budgets, labor costs, and operational expenses with a clear, data-backed view of levers, risks, and ROI. Run the P

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