Imagine how your ideas and expertise can change a patient’s life. Our Global Supply Chain (GSC) team plays a central part in ensuring our products are delivered to patients with cardiovascular disease. You’ll partner cross-functionally with manufacturing operations and sales teams, delivering thoughtful solutions to complex challenges all while developing your knowledge of the medical device industry. Whether your work includes strategic inventory planning, labeling, warehouse management, material handling, or any of our other supply chain opportunities, you will be making a meaningful contribution to our team and to patients all over the world.

Make a meaningful difference to patients around the world. At Edwards Lifesciences facilities around the world, our Manufacturing teams create the tools, technologies, and devices that transform patients’ lives. As part of our sewing, assembly, delivery, and distribution teams, your attention to detail and commitment to continuous improvement will help us turn innovative ideas into reality. Your purpose-driven work will help leave lasting and positive impacts on patient lives.

The Irvine Plant is searching for a strategic leader responsible for driving continuous improvement across all operational aspects of the facility, utilizing Edwards Production System (EPS) and Lean / Six Sigma methodologies, to optimize productivity, quality, cost reduction, and safety, fostering a culture of innovation and employee engagement to achieve world-class performance and meet organizational goals. 

How you’ll make an impact:

• Lead the coordination, deployment and implementation of Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma and Project Management from conception to completion within the Manufacturing site.

• Develop and implement a comprehensive Business Excellence (BEx) and PMO strategy aligned with Irvine site objectives, EPS, and site KPIs.  Partner with Operations, Quality, Planning and Safety to ensure world class systems are developed and deployed. Manage the BEx/PMO organization including developing site strategy, deployment road maps, leading site objective setting, directing staff activities, coaching/developing staff, and ensuring site-wide change management for new initiatives.

• Develop a robust talent development and succession planning in alignment with functional growth strategies across the BEX organization.

• Lead the plants strategic planning and objective setting using Hoshin Kanri or other methodologies to ensure focus on goal alignment with GSC and objective cascade within the plant. 

• Drive strategic lean events (VSM, Kaizen, etc.); update knowledge and applications of Lean tools, 6S, Six Sigma and Project Management.

• Plan, establish, and direct strategy, deployment plans, overall training, execution, and follow through of all lean events and six sigma actions. Develop training programs for plant population to be constantly educated in all Lean, Six Sigma and Project Management related knowledge.

• Determine the appropriate plant metrics (tier metrics, etc.) and act as the plant metrics champion.  Track key performance metrics, report metrics periodically and work with cross-functional teams to analyze data for trends and opportunities for improvement.

• Act as Plant metrics champion for the Plant Dashboard and lead the Hoshin Kanri exercise to focus on goal alignment while evaluating opportunities and establishing a strategic plan.

• Drive the Leadership Team and Operations meetings and any other forum to describe and update the company or plant wide strategy and execution of BEx and PMO strategy and activities.

What you’ll need:

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering with a preference in Industrial and Manufacturing engineering.

• Demonstrated tracked record in manufacturing management in a regulated environment, successfully leading site-wide lean transformation. 

• Proven expertise in Business Excellence, Lean Manufacturing principles, and Six Sigma.

• Proven leadership experience managing and guiding a technical teams.

• Proven successful project management and leadership skills.

What else we look for:

• Six Sigma Black Belt Certified.

• Expert understanding and experience in managing manufacturing, continuous flow, value added concepts and requirements including VSM (Value Stream Mapping), Kaizen, Standard Work and Visual Management.

• Expert understanding related aspects of processes and/or systems (pull systems, balanced line design, theory of constraints, bottleneck optimization, etc.).

• Proven expertise in leading large-scale operational improvement initiatives in a manufacturing environment. 

• Excellent problem-solving, organizational, analytical and critical thinking skills including high discretion/judgment in decision making.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Solid understanding of project management methodologies while looking beyond existing processes and own discipline to define and resolve complex problems.

• Ability to develop and integrate metrics into the projects and operations that clearly demonstrate the value of manufacturing to the business and work with digital team to gather automatically where possible.

• Demonstrated ability to direct teams and provide coaching and feedback, including responsibility for all employee actions including hire/fire authority and partnering with HR on all aspects of employee relations.

Aligning our overall business objectives with performance, we offer competitive salaries, performance-based incentives, and a wide variety of benefits programs to address the diverse individual needs of our employees and their families.

For California (CA), the base pay range for this position is $187,000 to $265,000 (highly experienced). The pay for the successful candidate will depend on various factors (e.g., qualifications, education, prior experience).  Applications will be accepted while this position is posted on our Careers website.