Plant Manager
Sales & Business Development
Grand Forks, ND, USA
Posted on Aug 5, 2026
REPORTS TO: Operations Director
POSITION SUMMARY
The Plant Manager has overall responsibility for the safe, consistent, and efficient execution of manufacturing operations. This leader aligns Production, Stock Products, Purchasing, Scheduling, Inventory, Warehouse, and Quality as one integrated operating system and is accountable for delivering the company’s products on time, at the required quality, and at the targeted manufacturing cost.
PS Industries has built a strong manufacturing organization and a reputation for delivering high-quality engineered products. As we continue to grow, we recognize that operational excellence is a continuous journey. The Plant Manager will build upon our existing strengths by developing people, strengthening systems, improving visibility, and identifying opportunities that enhance safety, quality, delivery, productivity, and scalability.
This is not solely a production-supervision role. The Plant Manager must combine strong engineering judgment, extensive manufacturing-operations experience, digital fluency, and hands-on leadership. The role serves as the bridge between engineering and business systems and the physical work performed on the shop floor—turning data, designs, schedules, and standards into repeatable production processes and measurable operating results.
ROLE MANDATE
Lead and continually improve a disciplined manufacturing organization where people, processes, equipment, materials, and systems work together to safely deliver exceptional results. Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and operational excellence while strengthening manufacturing performance across the business.
CORE ROLES
- Safe and accountable operation. Employees understand expectations, leaders follow through, and safety is built into daily operating decisions.
- Reliable schedule performance. Production priorities, material readiness, labor, equipment, and engineering information are coordinated to meet customer commitments.
- Improved throughput and productivity. Constraints are identified early and capacity, labor, layout, equipment, and workflow are optimized using facts and operating data.
- Consistent quality. Products are built correctly the first time through process control, standard work, inspection discipline, and timely corrective action.
- Integrated Manufacturing Systems. Ensuring ERP/MRP, scheduling, inventory, quality data, engineering information, electronic work instructions, and shop-floor execution reflect the same operating reality.
- Strong manufacturing leadership. Managers and Supervisors own results, communicate across departments, solve problems at the appropriate level, and develop capable successors.
ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Plant Leadership & Accountability
- The Plant Manager must model the company’s standards for safety, integrity, teamwork, responsiveness, and accountability.
- Provide daily leadership for all manufacturing and plant-support functions within the role’s scope.
- Set clear priorities, establish operating expectations, assign ownership, and ensure commitments are completed.
- Lead daily and weekly production reviews using current information on safety, quality, delivery, labor, material readiness, capacity, and constraints.
- Ensure a culture of urgency without sacrificing safety, quality, respect, or long-term process discipline.
- Coach, evaluate, and develop managers and supervisors; address performance gaps directly and promptly.
- Translate manufacturing strategy established by the Operations Director into executable plans, staffing, priorities, and results.
- Model the company's values by demonstrating integrity, accountability, teamwork, and respect in every interaction.
Manufacturing Execution & Optimization
- Own the plant's production plan by coordinating labor, capacity, equipment, materials, and resources to meet customer commitments.
- Identify and remove bottlenecks across fabrication, welding, machining, paint, assembly, material flow, and other applicable operations.
- Strengthen standard work, visual controls, and production routines that improve repeatability and reduce dependence on tribal knowledge.
- Lead improvements in layout, workflow, material presentation, work-cell design, tooling, automation, and equipment utilization.
- Collaborate with Engineering and Design to ensure production readiness before work is released, including approved information, materials, tooling, labor, quality requirements, and clear priorities.
Manufacturing Systems & Process Integration
- Bridge engineering, ERP/MRP, scheduling, inventory, quality, and production systems so that digital information supports how work is actually planned and performed.
- Partner with Engineering, IT, Finance, and other functions to enhance bills of material, routers, labor standards, work instructions, production reporting, and data integrity.
- Develop practical dashboards and operating metrics that make schedule status, constraints, productivity, quality, and material readiness visible to leaders and employees.
- Promote practical manufacturing technologies—including automation, system integration, work instructions, and data collection—that simplify work, improve visibility, and strengthen operational performance.
- Maintain disciplined transactional processes so inventory, WIP, labor, and production status are timely and trustworthy.
Safety, Quality & Continuous Improvement
- Maintain a safe work environment and ensure compliance with company policies, training requirements, and applicable regulations.
- Treat safety observations, quality escapes, rework, and recurring disruptions as opportunities for structured root-cause analysis and sustainable corrective action.
- Partner with Quality to ensure inspection, documentation, nonconformance control, corrective action, and ISO 9001 processes are effective and continually integrated into production.
- Establish a practical continuous-improvement pipeline, prioritize projects by business impact, and verify that gains are sustained.
Cross-Functional Coordination
- Coordinate closely with Engineering to ensure design-for-manufacturability, resolve production issues, control changes, and ensure accurate information reaches the shop floor.
- Ensure alignment of Purchasing, Scheduling, Inventory, and Warehouse activities with production demand and material-readiness requirements.
- Partner with Sales, Project Management, and other customer-facing functions to communicate capacity, schedule risk, priorities, and recovery plans.
- Escalate significant safety, delivery, quality, staffing, equipment, or resource risks to the Operations Director with a clear assessment and recommended action.
LEADERSHIP SCOPE
The Plant Manager leads all subordinate manufacturing positions and is responsible for the performance of the full plant organization—not only the departments under direct day-to-day attention.
- Direct reports are expected to include the Production Manager, Stock Products Manager, Purchasing & Inventory Manager, Production Scheduler, Quality Manager, and with warehouse staff, supervisors, leads, and production employees aligned through the applicable reporting structure.
- Department-level optimization must not come at the expense of overall plant performance; this role resolves competing priorities based on company objectives.
- The Plant Manager is expected to be visible on the shop floor, accessible to employees, and equally capable of working with production personnel, engineers, executives, and external partners.
MEASURES OF SUCCESS
Specific annual targets will be established in coordination with the Operations Director. Performance will generally be evaluated using the following measures:
Performance Area | Representative Measures |
Safety | Recordable incidents, corrective-action closure, training completion, proactive hazard reduction |
Delivery | On-time completion, schedule attainment, backlog health, recovery from schedule risk |
Productivity | Throughput, earned versus actual labor, cycle time, overtime, equipment utilization |
Quality | First-pass yield, rework, nonconformance, warranty/field issues, corrective-action effectiveness |
Materials | Material readiness, inventory accuracy, shortages, WIP visibility, transaction discipline |
Improvement | Implemented improvements, verified savings/capacity gains, sustained standard work |
Leadership | Goals achieved, accountability, retention, succession depth, cross-functional teamwork |
CANDIDATE PROFILE
The strongest candidate will be an engineer by training and a manufacturing operator by experience. They will understand how products are designed, planned, purchased, fabricated, inspected, and delivered—and will be comfortable moving between a production meeting, an ERP workflow, a process-improvement project, and a direct conversation about accountability.
- Hands-on and floor-oriented; learns the process firsthand and earns credibility through sound decisions and consistent follow-through.
- Systems thinker; sees the entire value stream and understands how decisions in one function affect delivery, cost, quality, and workload elsewhere.
- Experienced in leveraging technology and manufacturing systems to improved operational performance while recognizing that technology is a tool-not the objective.
- Decisive and accountable; making timely decisions with incomplete information, communicating the reasoning, and adjusting when facts change.
- Structured problem solver; separates symptoms from causes and creates durable countermeasures.
- Develop leaders by setting high expectations while coaching others to think independently and take responsibility for the results.
- Clear communicator; can translate technical and operational complexity into priorities understood at every level of the organization.
- Leads change thoughtfully, building upon proven processes while encouraging continuous improvement.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Manufacturing, Industrial, or a closely related engineering discipline; equivalent technical education may be considered only with substantial relevant manufacturing leadership experience.
- At least 10 years of progressive manufacturing-operations experience, including significant responsibility in a custom fabrication, engineered-to-order, or similarly complex manufacturing environment.
- At least 5 years leading managers, supervisors, or multi-department manufacturing teams with accountability for plant-level results.
- Demonstrated experience improving throughput, labor productivity, quality, material flow, capacity, and on-time delivery.
- Strong working knowledge of production planning, scheduling, purchasing, inventory control, warehouse operations, quality systems, and shop-floor execution.
- Demonstrated ability to use ERP/MRP and manufacturing data to manage operations and improve business processes.
- Strong written, verbal, analytical, organizational, and conflict-resolution skills.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience in metal fabrication, welding, machining, paint/powder coat, assembly, or project-based manufacturing.
- Lean manufacturing, Theory of Constraints, Six Sigma, or other structured continuous-improvement experience.
- Experience implementing or materially improving ERP/MRP, production scheduling, shop-floor data collection, electronic work instructions, dashboards, or manufacturing automation.
- ISO 9001 Quality Management System experience.
- Experience with engineering-to-production handoffs, bills of material, routings, configuration, design-for-manufacturability, and engineering change control.
- Experience developing capital plans and leading equipment, automation, facility-layout, or manufacturing-system implementations.
This job description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed. Other duties and
responsibilities may be assigned as business needs require.
