Operational Excellence and Program Manager

Posting Period

From December 02, 2025

to February 27, 2026

Country or region

United States

Location

Home office, Wisconsin

Business Unit

Animal Nutrition

Department

Production / Operations

Entry date

As soon as possible

Job Status

Permanent - Full time

Minimal required work experience

4 to 5 years

Minimal education level required

Bachelor's Degree

Salary

Based on experience

Benefits

Competitive social benefits

Position Overview

The Operational Excellence and Program Manager will serve as a critical leader in driving Lean transformation, business process optimization, and enterprise program execution. This individual will bridge the gap between technical manufacturing excellence and business process management, ensuring operational scalability and efficiency. With a strong foundation in process engineering and Lean methodologies, the role will be central to standardizing operations, leading ERP implementation initiatives, and optimizing end-to-end value streams across operations. We are seeking a solutions-driven leader who designs processes, systems, and standards that are simple, effective, and free from unnecessary bureaucracy. The ideal candidate will ensure that solutions are robust, repeatable, and sustainable, but always streamlined and practical for execution. A strong technical background, ideally within process engineering, coupled with direct experience in a manufacturing environment, is highly desired. The successful candidate will bring a data-driven decision-making mindset, ensuring improvements and strategies are backed by rigorous analysis and measurable outcomes.

Key Responsibilities Operational & Business Excellence

• Lead and support Lean Daily Management, driving performance across Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and People (SQDCP).
• Champion Lean principles across operations, embedding standard work, standard problem solving, and daily management systems.
• Facilitate and coach the use of A3 problem solving, ensuring teams apply structured methods to address root causes and implement sustainable solutions.
• Lead Kaizen events, value stream mapping, and 6S initiatives, systematically identifying and eliminating waste while building continuous improvement into daily operations.
• Identify and implement waste reduction opportunities across processes, ensuring gains in efficiency, flow, and productivity.
• Build and refine business processes tied directly to Lean fundamentals, ensuring operational, tactical, and strategic goals are connected to drive both business and operational excellence.
• Partner with manufacturing and operations leaders to ensure process optimization is sustained at both technical and management levels.
• Collaborate with managers to cascade strategic objectives into measurable daily actions by applying Hoshin Kanri strategy deployment principles. Ensure alignment across long-term vision, annual priorities, and frontline execution through structured goal-setting, visual management, and disciplined follow-up.
• Map, analyze, and optimize business processes across operations, ensuring alignment between manufacturing, supply chain, quality, finance, and commercial functions.
• Build scalable workflows and governance structures that enhance efficiency and cross-functional collaboration.
• Develop metrics and dashboards to measure process performance and business impact. Take a hands-on role in building data capture methods, analyzing results, and ensuring data is actively used in daily, tactical, and long-term decision-making.

Program Management

• Serve as program lead and subject matter expert (SME) for ERP implementation, with a strong preference for Microsoft Dynamics 365.
• Manage ERP-related initiatives, ensuring requirements gathering, process alignment, data integrity, and system adoption.
• Drive cross-functional stakeholder engagement to ensure ERP supports both operational and business process excellence.
• Translate complex business requirements into system solutions, supporting configuration, training, and continuous improvement of ERP functionality.
• Oversee program portfolios, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and with measurable outcomes.

Leadership & Culture

• Act as a change agent, embedding a culture of continuous improvement, accountability, and data-driven decision making.
• Coach and mentor teams in Lean methodologies, ERP adoption, and structured problem solving.
• Foster collaboration across technical and business functions to align priorities and accelerate results.
• Demonstrate a pragmatic, straightforward leadership style, delivering solutions that are simple, actionable, and effective, while ensuring processes remain robust, repeatable, and sustainable.

Required

• Operational Excellence
• Lean Manufacturing
• Business Excellence
• Process Improvement
• Project Management
• Manufacturing Operations
• Quality Assurance

An asset

• Strategy Execution
• Process Engineering
• Bioprocessing
• Fermentation
• Supply Chain
• Enterprise Resource Planning

Lallemand is a privately held Canadian company founded in the late 19th century, which develops, produces, and markets microorganisms for various markets. The administrative offices of the parent company are in Montreal, Canada. Today, Lallemand employs more than 5,000 people working in more than 45 countries on 5 continents.

Lallemand Animal Nutrition is committed to optimizing animal performance and wellbeing with specific microbial product and service solutions. We develop, produce and market silage additives, probiotics, antioxidants and yeast derivatives for animal nutrition, as well as microbial solutions for animal environment. We serve all livestock markets: ruminant, swine, poultry, aquaculture as well as equine and companion animals. We like to define ourselves as a "field-led science supported" company. As such, our solutions are supported by a strong commitment to R&D and technical support with a team of experts in the field. Our solutions are marketed in over 80 countries around the world, through our own sales teams or local distributors.

Please take note that accommodations will be provided in all parts of the hiring process. Applicants need to make their needs known in advance.