Senior Manager, Smart Factory Digital Solutions

Job Summary

The Senior Manager, Smart Factory Digital Solutions is responsible for leading the strategy, deployment, and scaling of Smart Factory initiatives across manufacturing sites globally. This role ensures that digital transformation enables Operations to drive performance, visibility, and business value through the adoption of digital tools and technologies across the global supply chain. This role will also drive IT and OT convergence, leveraging Industry 4.0 technologies, ensuring seamless integration of data-driven solutions to drive operational excellence, predictive insights, and enhance decision-making. The position is remote, with up to 25% travel in the US and globally, to manufacturing sites and corporate offices. The ideal candidate combines technical acumen with strong leadership and program management skills to drive productivity and operational excellence across global manufacturing sites.

Key Accountabilities and Outcomes

1. Smart Factory Strategy and Development

· Leads the development of business-driven Smart Factory strategies, roadmap, ensuring alignment with manufacturing operations priorities.

· Oversee the deployment and development of Smart Factory digital solutions and systems (e.g., OEE, MES, TPM, etc.).

· Coordinates activities across Smart Factory domains to ensure tools and use cases are deployed efficiently, with measurable business impact.

2. Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement:

· Act as the IT/OT business partner to facilitate strong collaboration across Operations, Engineering, and IT, and prioritizing business needs into scalable digital solutions.

· Partner with Operations, Engineering, Quality, EHS, and Supply Chain stakeholders to drive alignment ensuring site needs and business timelines for operational autonomy.

· Collaborate across functions globally, to ensure standardization of deployment methods, documentation, and tool usage.

3. Program Management and Cross-Functional Leadership

· Manages the end-to-end delivery of Smart Factory projects across sites, ensuring timelines, resources, and deliverables are met.

· Coordinates internal Product Owners, site champions, and external vendors to drive successful implementations, with direct supervision of Smart Factory Digital Solutions analysts and data analysts.

· Leads communications, project and technology governance, providing regular updates to senior leadership and stakeholders.

4. Technology Leadership

· Lead data integration of manufacturing systems, plant floor technologies (e.g. SCADA, PLC, IIoT, MES) and enterprise platforms (SAP, cloud, data lake) to enable visibility and enhance decision-making.

· Develop and implement real-time IT/OT data intelligence solutions across manufacturing plants to optimize asset performance, improve productivity, and drive operational efficiency.

· Foster innovation in digital capabilities to enhance frontline worker productivity and operational efficiency through advanced data analytics and AI-driven process optimization.

5. Operational Ownership and Technology Governance

· Defines clear ownership models for all levels of deployment and sustainability at the enterprise and site-level management of Smart Factory tools and processes.

· Establishes a Smart Factory Maturity Model and supports assessments that identify site readiness, progression opportunities, and drive sustainability of digital solutions.

· Ensure robust governance of digital solutions, including enterprise architecture, data quality, cybersecurity, and compliance.

6. Business Impact and Value realization

· Ensures Smart Factory deployments lead to measurable improvements in areas such as uptime, labor effectiveness, process visibility, and throughput.

· Builds and maintains deployment trackers, KPIs, and scorecards to visualize site adoption and program impact.

· Champions the operational application of Smart Factory insights, enabling plants to use digital tools in day-to-day performance management.

Knowledge, Experience and Skills

· Bachelor’s degree preferably in Computer Science, Engineering, MIS or related field, Master’s degree preferred. MBA or equivalent business experience is a plus. PMP and/or Agile certification is preferred.

· Minimum ten (10) years of experience in Manufacturing Operations or comparable experience implementing and supporting digital solutions for the relevant business area.

· Strong experience deploying Smart Factory tools (OEE software, MES, production monitoring, digital data collection systems) and a deep understanding of manufacturing operations. Food Industry preferred.

· Strong knowledge of industry 4.0 digital technologies, including IIoT, web and mobile applications, cloud computing, data analytics and AI that drive digital transformation in manufacturing and industrial processes.

· Demonstrated business acumen; understands the key financial drivers and dynamics related to growth and financial performance.

· Demonstrates a solid understanding of organization’s key processes as well as the business hierarchies including supply chain systems and processes.

· Skilled in project and program management across cross-functional teams and external vendors, including the definition of project plans and the supervision of project associates for one or more projects.

· Demonstrated ability to develop digital solutions to loosely defined business problems and partner with business resources, internal team members and external partners to drive value.

· Strong interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to work effectively with a wide range of associates across multiple divisions at different organizational levels.

· Solid written and verbal communication skills including solid presentation abilities; demonstrated ability to influence to drive change & business outcome.

· Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.

· Up to 25% of travel US and Globally to support project requirements.

· Demonstrated ability in collaborating, influencing and negotiating with all levels within the organization.

· Effective communicator with a track record of driving adoption and execution at the plant level.

· Experience implementing and/or supporting packaged application systems

· Strong PC Skills, proficiency with Windows, Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Visio).

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