Lean Operations Consultant

Position Summary The Lean Operations Consultant (LOC) is the most distinctive role in iBase-t’s Customer Success organization. Where Customer Value Partners (CVPs) own the strategic relationship and Expert Services (ES) provides Solumina product depth, the LOC provides something neither can fully replicate: the credibility of lived A&D manufacturing experience, applied to the specific challenge of getting shop floors to change how they work. Solumina has over 5,000 configurable features. Most customers use a fraction of what is available — not because the features do not fit their operations, but because the processes, habits, and organizational structures on their shop floors have not changed to take advantage of them. The LOC’s job is to find where that gap lives, quantify what it costs, and work with the customer’s operations leadership and iBase-t’s technical teams to close it. This is not a software implementation role. The LOC is a lean and industrial engineering expert first, an organizational change practitioner second, and a manufacturing digitalization advisor third. The target candidate has been on the shop floor — managed operations, facilitated kaizen events, driven Standard Work programs, and understood why front-line supervisors resist the changes that would make their teams more effective. That credibility is the foundation of everything this role accomplishes. Core Responsibilities Lean Assessment & Friction Discovery

• Conduct structured lean assessments at customer manufacturing facilities: observe shop floor operations firsthand, document current-state workflows across all Solumina-enabled processes, and systematically identify the friction points — process gaps, workaround behaviors, organizational resistance, and configuration misalignment — that are preventing full adoption.
• Apply value stream mapping (VSM), standard work analysis, time-and-motion observation, and gemba walk methodology to build an evidence-based picture of where value is being lost and what must change for it to be captured.
• Distinguish clearly between friction types: process friction (LOC resolves through lean and OCM work), configuration friction (ES resolves through Solumina configuration), and relationship or strategic friction (CVP resolves through the VRF and executive relationship). Hand each finding to the right team with full context.
• Quantify improvement opportunities in operational terms the customer’s leadership understands and cares about: work order cycle time reduction, FAI compliance rates, NCR open-to-close time, shop floor documentation hours, defect escape rates. Connect each opportunity to the KPIs committed in the original VRF.
• Produce a formal Lean Assessment Report at the conclusion of each engagement: findings, prioritized improvement opportunities, OCM considerations, and recommended actions for both LOC follow-up and Expert Services configuration.

Organizational Change Management

• Develop and execute site-specific OCM plans that address the actual resistance patterns observed during assessment — not generic change management frameworks, but targeted engagement strategies designed for the specific supervisors, leads, and shop floor personnel at each facility.
• Build the internal champion base that sustains process changes after the LOC engagement ends: identify natural influencers on the shop floor, coach them in the new ways of working, and give them the tools to reinforce the change independently.
• Work with customer operations leadership — Directors and Vice Presidents (VPs) of Operations, Quality, and Manufacturing Engineering — to build visible executive sponsorship for process changes. Passive awareness is not sufficient; the LOC works to make leadership actively present in the change.
• Facilitate kaizen events, standard work development sessions, and cross-functional alignment workshops that produce documented, measurable process changes — not presentations about process changes.
• Identify and address the specific objections that shop floors raise against standardization and digitalization — “the old way works fine,” “we’re different from other sites,” “the system slows us down” — with evidence-based counterarguments grounded in the assessment findings.
• Develop and maintain a 30-60-90 day OCM plan for each site engagement, with documented milestones, responsible parties, and measurable adoption checkpoints that the CVP can track in the VRF.

Expert Services Coordination & Configuration Guidance

• Translate lean assessment findings into specific, prioritized Solumina configuration recommendations for Expert Services: which features or modules would deliver the most operational value in this shop floor context, in what sequence, and with what process preconditions that must be met first.
• Brief Expert Services before each configuration engagement on the operational context, the resistance patterns, and the specific process changes the OCM program is driving — ensuring that ES configuration decisions reinforce the lean direction, not work against it.
• Work with Expert Services during configuration to provide the operational translation layer: “this feature maps to the following step in their current workflow, and here is why the supervisor in Building 3 will push back on it.”
• Identify Solumina capabilities — across the full 5,000-feature footprint — that are relevant to the customer’s specific operations but have not yet been activated, and build the operational case for enabling them. This is not upselling; it is closing the gap between what the customer paid for and what they are using.

CVP Partnership & VRF Integration

• Brief the assigned Customer Value Partner (CVP) on all lean assessment findings before and after each site engagement — ensuring that the VRF reflects the operational reality discovered, and that KPIs are grounded in what the assessment revealed, not just what was committed at point of sale.
• Provide the CVP with documented, quantified improvement findings that can be incorporated into bowler charts and QBR materials — giving the CVP the operational evidence base to hold results-oriented conversations with customer executives.
• Serve as the operations credibility resource in customer-facing sessions where shop floor reality needs to be addressed directly: steering committee presentations, executive QBRs where operations resistance is a topic, and site-level go-live reviews.
• Flag account-level signals to the CVP that suggest the need for additional LOC engagement: declining adoption rates post-go-live, persistent ticket patterns in specific modules, or CVP-reported executive feedback about process difficulty.

Knowledge Contribution & Practice Development

• Contribute lean assessment findings and OCM approaches to iBase-t’s internal knowledge base, building the body of industry-specific lean intelligence that makes subsequent engagements at similar facility types faster and more targeted.
• Participate in iBase-t’s Solumina User Group (SUG) and Excelerate conference as a subject matter expert on lean manufacturing and shop floor digitalization in A&D environments — representing iBase-t’s operational depth, not just its software capabilities.
• Collaborate with the Principal Customer Value Partner on methodology development: ensuring that lean assessment frameworks, OCM templates, and engagement structures reflect current best practice in A&D manufacturing digitalization.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in aerospace and defense manufacturing operations, lean manufacturing, or industrial engineering — with direct, hands‑on experience working on or managing A&D shop floor operations. Consulting or advisory experience is valuable but does not substitute for direct manufacturing experience.
• Demonstrated, documented track record of driving organizational change in A&D manufacturing environments: not designing a process improvement, but facilitating its adoption by a workforce that did not initially want to change. References should be able to speak to this specifically.
• Deep A&D shop floor domain knowledge: work order management, traveler control, quality inspection workflow, First Article Inspection (FAI), nonconformance report (NCR) processes, DCMA oversight environments, AS9100 and NADCAP compliance context.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification strongly preferred. Kaizen facilitation expertise, value stream mapping (VSM), standard work development, and PDCA methodology are required. A practitioner who has run kaizen events and produced measurable results, not just a trained observer.
• Strong executive presence and the interpersonal credibility to challenge VP and Director‑level operations leadership with evidence‑based recommendations — respectfully, persistently, and effectively.
• Ability and willingness to travel 40‑50% of the time to customer manufacturing sites across the United States and internationally.
• Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, aerospace engineering, or a related field required.

Strongly Preferred

• Familiarity with Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software for standardizing shop floor work — specifically experience using MES as a vehicle for enforcing standard work, routing control, and digital traveler management. Full Solumina expertise is not required; the ability to see how a configured MES can reinforce lean process disciplines is the relevant capability.
• Experience with Solumina, Teamcenter, SAP Production Planning (PP), or comparable MES/ERP platforms in an A&D manufacturing environment.
• APICS Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM) or Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP) certification.
• Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt or equivalent advanced lean credentials.
• Prior experience working in or alongside a professional services or consulting engagement model — managing deliverables, producing formal findings reports, and communicating recommendations to executive audiences.
• Familiarity with digital transformation change management frameworks in manufacturing environments (not generic organizational change, but manufacturing‑specific digitalization).

What Sets This Role Apart This is not a typical consulting role. The Lean Operations Consultant is hired for their manufacturing credibility, not their software knowledge. The target candidate has managed production on an A&D shop floor, has driven lean transformations that people resisted and then adopted, and understands the specific culture of aerospace manufacturing — the deference to process documentation, the fear of DCMA scrutiny, the pride of skilled trades, and the skepticism of shop floor personnel toward anyone who has not “been there.” The value is the credibility to say: I’ve been where you are. When a Lean Operations Consultant stands in front of a shop floor supervisor at Pratt & Whitney or GE Aerospace and says “I know this process has worked for 15 years. Here’s what it’s costing you, and here’s how we change it,” they need to be believed. That belief comes from demonstrated domain knowledge and personal experience — not from a consulting methodology or a software certification. Software expertise grows. Manufacturing credibility is built over a career. iBase-t will invest in building the LOC’s Solumina knowledge over time. The Solumina product knowledge can be learned on the job, through Expert Services partnerships and internal training. The 10+ years of A&D manufacturing floor experience that makes this role effective cannot be substituted. Hire for the manufacturing credential first. #J-18808-Ljbffr Neara