Director, Global Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence

The Best E-Commerce Company on Earth

Introducing an Amazing Opportunity 

Our client is one of the largest e-commerce organizations on Earth, striving each and every day to be Earth’s most customer-centric company for consumers, sellers, and enterprises.  Organized into two principal business segments, North America and International, this enterprise has time-and-again demonstrated its dedication to sustained long-term growth and profitability – simply by paying extraordinary attention to its customers. Even since that very first day it opened its doors for business.

By serving consumers through retail websites, selling millions of unique products with laser-like focus on selection, price, and convenience.  By constantly striving to improve operating efficiencies to continuously lower prices for customers. By delivering evermore easy-to-use functionality, fast and reliable fulfillment, and outrageously great customer service.  That’s our client.

The company also offers programs which enable independent sellers to sell their products via company websites or their own branded websites, offering that same level of unparalleled order fulfillment execution services.  And, finally, our client also serves developers and enterprises of all sizes through its web services operations, which provide access to technology infrastructure enabling virtually any type of business on Earth.

So, it should perhaps go without saying, but our client is absolutely at the leading edge of today’s global e-commerce environment, and their businesses are intensely competitive, rapidly evolving, and an immense amount of fun to be a part of.

Can I interest you in taking a closer look?

Position Overview

The Director, Global Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence is responsible for implementing our client’s comprehensive business improvement system. Which we’ll call BIS for now, even though there’s a top-secret internal name to be revealed later.  And, for enabling the company’s world-wide operations to significantly benefit from productivity gains derived from Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence.

The role is highly visible and assumes primary responsibility for implementing continuous improvement across all business functions and all business units of the company. Reporting to the SVP of Worldwide Operations, the Director will exercise considerable judgment to identify and execute strategic continuous improvement plans and tactical project implementation and completion processes.

Key Responsibilities 

The Director, Global Lean Six Sigma Operational Excellence will  facilitate and guide the application of BIS methods to process improvements with world-class quality levels in an organization experiencing constantly exploding growth.  As well, the Director will need to motivate and lead others to succeed under the challenging conditions of an extremely deadline-driven environment.  These include a team of Lean Senseis who will conceive, develop and integrate the innovative solutions and programs necessary to achieve these improvement targets.

Working closely with our client’s technology teams, this position also will merge highly sophisticated company systems with Lean Six Sigma principles.  The Director will need to be comfortable and savvy around leading-edge technology and adept at leveraging company capabilities in order to maximize the positive influence and impact of the BIS.

In somewhat more detail, our Director will:

• Partner with senior business leaders to develop and lead the continuous improvement strategy world-wide, across multiple sites.
• Drive the creation of focused standard work productivity and quality initiatives specific to the needs of the business teams and regions to meet and exceed business plans.
• Define and deploy the appropriate metrics to measure both productivity and process quality, providing meaningful feedback to the operations.
• Provide both strategic and tactical leadership regarding continuous improvement project selection, scope, definition and performance, to ensure alignment with business (Hoshin) strategy.
• Mentor and guide operations business teams in their ability to develop and execute daily, weekly & monthly action plans that increase quality, inventory accuracy and customer service.
• Instill long-term sustainability of the BIS by making its principles, policies, practices and language an integral component of standard work across global operations and by developing formal BIS education/training vehicles across the board to site champions, managers and company associates.
• Drive continuous improvement culture change through collaboration and communication regarding best practices knowledge sharing, internal and external benchmarking, talent development and overall, a visibly passionate and vocal advocacy for hands-on Lean leadership.

What You Bring to the Table

• Intimate knowledge of Lean principles, practices and techniques, combined with expertise in deploying Six Sigma tools, and the ability to champion standard work based on Lean Six Sigma principles
• Ten or more years of successful leadership experience in project management and facilitation of large cross-functional teams in business operations and technology process improvement areas
• Proven experience in leading large cross functional site transformations
• Demonstrated expertise in  deploying transactional Lean, manufacturing Lean, variation reduction, and design for six sigma methodologies
• Demonstrated experience and proficiency in effective communication of goals and strategies across multiple leadership levels of an organization
• Solid expertise in budget management,  strong understanding  key financial metrics, and proficiency with statistical analysis tools and processes
• Minimum of BS/BA in technical (math, engineering, science) curriculum
• MBA, other advanced degree preferred

About Those Personal Qualities

We expect that our successful candidate will bring a number of important personal characteristics to this critical role, among them:  a strong sense of urgency and personal commitment; decisiveness, self-confidence, a sixth sense for understanding, motivating and influencing others; the ability to handle constantly shifting priorities; a talent for sorting out the truly important from the merely urgent; and, highly-refined sense of good judgment applied in fast-paced environments, occasionally under stressful working circumstances.

In Closing

The position is based in Seattle, WA, the “Emerald City”. You should anticipate significant domestic and international travel in this position, most likely at the 50-60% range, but this will obviously vary over time based on the demands of the business and your own decisions.

Compensation consists of an excellent base salary and incentive bonus plan, and will of course depend on what you bring to the table.  As the company’s philosophy is very much focused on long-term success and profitability, as opposed to simply “making the numbers every quarter,” you should expect a significant financial reward in the form of long-term equity-based (stock) incentives. Relocation assistance provided as appropriate to your situation.

Please connect directly with Adam Zak, CEO of Adam Zak Executive Search, who has been retained to conduct this exceptionally interesting executive search +1 (847) 304-5300, via resume@LeanRecruiter.com, or by following the other email link just over to the right…