Operations Analyst Manager – Manufacturing Plants
Position Summary
The Operations Analyst Manager leads operational analysis, performance reporting, and continuous improvement support across the company’s manufacturing plants. This role partners with plant leadership, production, maintenance, quality, supply chain, finance, and HR to translate operational data into actionable insights that improve productivity, labor efficiency, cost control, production planning, safety, quality, and overall plant performance.
The ideal candidate is a hands-on, analytical leader with strong manufacturing business acumen, advanced reporting skills, and the ability to influence operational decisions through clear data, practical recommendations, and effective cross-functional collaboration.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Lead the development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of plant operational dashboards, reports, and scorecards.
- Analyze production, labor, downtime, throughput, scrap, quality, inventory, and cost data to identify trends, root causes, risks, and improvement opportunities.
- Partner with plant managers and department leaders to monitor performance against key operational goals, including safety, quality, delivery, productivity, labor utilization, and cost.
- Support daily, weekly, and monthly operating reviews by preparing data-driven insights, variance explanations, and recommended corrective actions.
- Develop standardized reporting processes across manufacturing locations to improve consistency, accuracy, and visibility.
- Lead and coach a team of operations analysts or reporting resources, including prioritizing work, reviewing deliverables, and developing analytical capability.
- Collaborate with production, maintenance, engineering, quality, finance, supply chain, and HR teams to improve business processes and decision-making.
- Identify process inefficiencies and support continuous improvement initiatives using data analysis, lean tools, standard work, and performance tracking.
- Evaluate labor standards, staffing models, overtime trends, production schedules, and plant capacity to support workforce planning and cost management.
- Translate complex data into clear reports, presentations, and recommendations for plant and corporate leadership.
- Support operational planning through analysis of production volume, labor requirements, material usage, and plant performance trends.
- Accuracy, timeliness, and usability of operational reporting.
- Improvement in visibility to plant performance metrics.
- Reduction in reporting errors, manual work, and duplicated reporting efforts.
- Actionable analysis that supports improvements in productivity, labor efficiency, downtime, scrap, throughput, inventory, and cost.
- Successful partnership with plant and corporate leadership to drive decision-making.
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Operations Management, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, Data Analytics, or a related field required
- Five or more years of experience in operations analysis, manufacturing analytics, production reporting, industrial engineering, finance analysis, or a related role.
- Prior experience in a manufacturing, distribution, or plant operations environment
- Strong understanding of manufacturing operations, production workflows, labor planning, downtime, throughput, quality, inventory, and cost drivers.
- Advanced Excel skills required; experience with Power Query, Power Pivot, Power BI, ERP systems, or other reporting tools preferred.
- Demonstrated ability to analyze large data sets, identify trends, explain variances, and make practical business recommendations.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to present findings clearly to both operational and executive audiences.
- Ability to work across multiple plants, priorities, and stakeholder groups in a fast-paced environment.
- Analytical thinking and problem-solving
- Manufacturing and operational business acumen
- Process improvement mindset
- Attention to detail and data accuracy
- Leadership and team development
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Clear communication and executive-level presentation skills
- Project management and prioritization
- Confidentiality and sound judgment
Key Performance Measures
Qualifications
Core Competencies
All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, age, color, sex (including pregnancy), religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, military status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable laws or regulations.
GPAC (Growing People and Companies) is an award-winning search firm specializing in placing quality professionals within multiple industries across the United States since 1990. We are extremely competitive, client-focused and realize that our value is in our ability to deliver the right solutions at the right time.
