Business Improvement Leader - Leading Aerospace and Defence Business, £Competitive with Excellent Benefits, Gloucestershire

THE COMPANY:

• A leading British based, global aerospace and defence business, located in Gloucestershire.
• The business develops safety-critical systems for defence and commercial aerospace platforms.
• The business is well supported by its Private Equity owners, with commitments to further investment.

THE ROLE:

• The Business Improvement Leader will be instrumental in developing end to end business process improvement and will be well supported by the leadership team.
• Key activities will include re-shaping the front-end activity (sales/bidding process, customer satisfaction monitoring etc), enhancing engineering productivity and supporting the manufacturing teams with lean / 6 sigma manufacturing improvement programmes.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Leading activities to identify, capture, and help sustain business-wide improvements to generate significant business results.
• Creating an embedded lean and business improvement culture, building broader organisational capability.
• Leading and facilitating major Kaizen events and improvement projects to achieve measurable and targeted improvements resulting in improved margins and customer satisfaction.
• Mentoring and developing lean practitioners to facilitate impactful Kaizen events and initiatives.
• Influencing key stakeholders and leading change initiatives to ensure the organisation successfully adapts to new processes and enhanced ways of working.

THE PERSON:

This is a fantastic opportunity for a proven operational excellence practitioner with a background in Lean/Six Sigma/Business Process Improvement. They will have broad cross-functional business expertise with a strong bias for execution and value creation.

The Business Improvement Leader will be comfortable as an individual contributor who will mobilise the business through their ability to engage and influence. They will bring operational pace, commercial acumen, drive, humility, judgement, and the ability to engage and motivate the wider organisation. 

• The Business Improvement Lead is likely to be educated to a degree standard or will be qualified by experience.
• They should have formal training in Lean/6 Sigma methods and proven experience deploying that skillset to implement Lean process changes in non-operational and operational areas.
• Ideally, they will have gained their experience either as a consultant working in non-industrial sectors and/or from industry where they have applied Lean to customer-facing functions.
• Familiarity with aerospace and defense industry practices and requirements is highly desirable.
• Strong project management skills and the ability to lead cross-functional teams.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Effective communication and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Change management experience, with a track record of successful implementation of new processes.

Package and Location

The package is highly competitive and will include an attractive salary and an excellent benefits package. The role is based in Gloucestershire.