Director, Operational Excellence

at  Cardinal Health

Cardinal Health Canada, with over 1,400 employees nationwide, is an essential link in the Canadian healthcare supply chain, providing over 70,000 products to healthcare facilities and medical professionals across the country.
We are currently seeking a Director, Operational Excellence to join our leadership team. Reporting to the Vice-President, Operations & Supply Chain, Canada, the role is responsible for identifying and executing against performance improvement opportunities, enabling successful transformations across the region, and using contemporary process improvement techniques while building people capabilities.
The Director will execute the strategic goals for operational excellence within the North Region including the selection and development of resources, managing the project pipeline, and ensuring ongoing communication on progress against goals. Leading a team of professional regional analysts (3 direct reports), the Director works closely with Operations & Supply Chain leaders to develop and meet key performance indicators (KPI’s) and implement procedures to achieve efficiency targets. The role interacts with internal leaders and external stakeholders and persuades others into agreement of making significant impactful changes to ways of executing, measuring and reporting.
This role supports the Operations Leadership team in leading performance improvement projects according to business priorities and in driving the continuous improvement culture across all distribution centers (9 in Canada and 2 in the U.S.). Other key responsibilities include leading the automation strategy and enhancements across all sites, tiered accountability program, productivity tracking, kaizen and root cause analysis support, Operational Excellence training and compliance, and project management.
For more information on what it is like to work for us, please watch this video: Cardinal Health - Wings.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in related field, advanced degree preferred
• 12 years of experience in Supply Chain, Operations, Manufacturing, Engineering or related field
• 7 years of experience in Kaizen/Lean/Six Sigma/Continuous Improvement strategy, implementations, recommendations
• Certification as a Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt, recommended
• 5 years of project and process management experience
• 5 years of people management experience
• Advanced proficiency in English (French an asset); strong communication skills with ability to build relationships across all levels of the organization (hourly distribution employees to senior leaders)
• Strong financial acumen and analytical skills
• Change agent with ability to drive continuous improvement culture
• Travel <25%

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead, develop and coach the team of regional analysts
• Assess current business performance and opportunities to deploy and balance operational excellence resources and projects
• Track and trend budget, productivity and efficiency targets to ensure year over year improvements
• Partner with the global Center of Excellence on large scale initiatives, KPI tracking and best practice sharing
• Assess, develop and refine key performance indicators and implement procedures to achieve efficiency and cost savings targets
• Act as a change agent to bring about significant improvement in safety, quality, service and cost, meeting stakeholder commitments and driving the culture of continuous improvement
• Drive the understanding and application of Lean principles, systems, and tools across distribution sites, transportation and Supply Chain functions
• Conduct special data analysis projects as requested by Operations Leadership team
• Lead teams to address business process problems and design new processes to achieve results. Facilitate problem-solving sessions and support action plans
• Mentor and train Kaizen leaders and support cross-functional or large-scale Kaizen events
• Lead the automation strategy for our Distribution Centers and support other complex or large scope projects and initiatives