Run the floor, not a spreadsheet

Our client is an established Australian manufacturer, part of a larger national group, that has spent decades building a reputation for steel products that turn up right and turn up on time. From a large facility in Brisbane's southern industrial belt they manufacture in house — laser cutting, pressing, folding and turret punching — and distribute nationally from their own warehouse.

It's a hands-on, down-to-earth business. The people who do well there take ownership, know their plant, and lead from the floor rather than from behind a door.

The role

Reporting jointly to the Managing Director and the General Manager, you'll take end-to-end ownership of the operation and a team of 40 to 50 across manufacturing, warehouse and dispatch.

Manufacturing and production is the heart of it. Logistics and distribution comes next. Quality sits behind both until something goes wrong, at which point it comes first. Procurement, inventory, maintenance and safety all report up through you as well — this is the whole site, not a single function with a large title.

Day to day you will:

• Lead all manufacturing across the facility and keep output, efficiency and on-time delivery moving in the right direction
• Own production planning and scheduling against QA requirements, customer lead times and DIFOT targets
• Oversee the national warehouse, interstate distribution and dispatch, including carrier performance
• Manage third-party finishing suppliers — galvanising, powder coating, passivating, laser cutting and line haul — on cost, quality and reliability
• Own the plant and machinery maintenance and calibration schedule, and build the preventive discipline that keeps machines running
• Own site quality to ISO 9001, investigating non-conformances properly so the same failure doesn't come back
• Lead, coach and develop your supervisors, and delegate properly so the operation doesn't depend on you being everywhere

About you

You've run a manufacturing site, or you've run production at a bigger one and you're ready for the rest of it. Specifically:

• Operations, manufacturing or production management experience, ideally in steel, metal or heavy manufacturing
• Real, hands-on knowledge of plant and equipment. You understand how the machines work, what breaks, and what it takes to keep them running — this matters more here than any qualification
• You've led supervisors, not just operators, and you've developed them rather than worked around them
• You've owned operational numbers — DIFOT, downtime, rework, labour — and you can tell us what you moved and how
• Practical continuous improvement, implemented rather than certified
• Comfortable in a manufacturing ERP. Which one matters far less than how quickly you got productive in it

A mechanical engineering background would suit this role well, but it isn't essential and neither is a degree. If you know manufacturing and you learn quickly, our client is open on where you've come from.

What's on offer

• The whole site. Manufacturing, logistics, procurement, quality, inventory, maintenance and safety in one seat — rare at this size, and the reason people take this kind of role
• Genuine autonomy and a short line to the people who make the decisions. No layers, no committees
• A stable, established Australian manufacturer inside a larger group — not a turnaround
• Real plant, real product and real volume, with scope to change how the site runs and see the results inside a quarter
• A competitive package for the scope of the role, discussed in confidence
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