Lean Excellence Manager

Lean Excellence Manager

Pay Range: Multiple factors, including individual experience, skills and abilities, will determine where an employee is ultimately placed in the pay range.

Locations:
Various International Paper Plant locations throughout the US

Position Overview:

As a Lean Excellence Manager, you will help build and sustain Lean practices at an International Paper manufacturing facility, strengthening how teams manage performance, solve problems, and continuously improve how work gets done.

You'll work closely with plant leadership, supervisors, and operators to establish strong daily management practices, address operating issues, and build continuous improvement capability across the operation. As an individual contributor, your impact will come through your ability to build trust, influence others, use facts to challenge existing thinking, and turn commitments into action.

If you already have Lean Methodology or Continuous Improvement experience, you'll have the opportunity to put those methodologies to work and build upon them. If your background is primarily in manufacturing or operations, we'll provide structured development to help you build your Lean capability.

This is part of a growing opportunity across our U.S. manufacturing network. Each Lean Excellence Manager will be based at a specific plant, but we're hiring this role in various locations nationally. If you're interested in this opportunity but the posted location isn't right for you, we still encourage you to apply and tell us where you'd be interested in working as additional locations become available.

The Job You Will Perform:

Help establish and sustain daily management practices, including tiered meetings, Gemba, visual management, and effective shift-to-shift communication.

Spend significant time on the plant floor working with teams to understand performance, identify problems, and turn priorities into action.

Use data and structured problem solving to identify root causes, address operating issues, and improve speed-to-fix.

Drive follow-through on open actions and commitments, so improvements are sustained.

Coach and support teams as they build stronger problem-solving and continuous improvement capability.

Apply and continue developing your knowledge of Lean tools and methodologies, including 5S, Kaizen, Standard Work, Visual Management, SMED and Value Stream Mapping.

Partner with the Plant Manager and Lean Excellence leadership to support Lean deployment and drive measurable improvement across safety, quality, delivery, cost and employee engagement.

Capture and share effective practices and learnings as the Lean system expands across IP.

The Qualifications, Skills and Knowledge You Will Bring:

Required Qualifications

Minimum of 2 years of experience in a manufacturing environment, ideally in operations, engineering, process improvement, or another plant-based role.

Experience identifying problems, taking action, and contributing to improved performance.

Demonstrated ability to build relationships and influence others without formal authority.

Strong follow-through and persistence in seeing problems and commitments through resolution.

Ability to use data and facts to understand issues and make recommendations.

Self-directed, action-oriented approach to your work.

Ability to communicate and work effectively with operators, supervisors, and plant leaders.

Willingness to work 100% in a manufacturing environment and spend significant time on the plant floor.

Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in engineering, business, operations management, or related field.

Experience with continuous improvement, Lean, Six Sigma or structured problem solving.

Experience applying Lean tools such as Kaizen, 5S, Standard Work, Visual Management, SMED or Value Stream Mapping.

Experience in corrugated manufacturing.

What You Can Expect:

You'll participate in a structured 90-day onboarding and development experience to build your understanding of IP's Lean operating system, deployment approach and continuous improvement tools. You'll also build relationships with plant and Lean Excellence leaders and others doing similar work across the company.

You'll be joining while IP's Lean system is being built and deployed, giving you an opportunity to contribute to how it takes hold across a large manufacturing network while continuing to build your own Lean and change leadership capabilities.