Project Manager, Cross-Functional Operations & Process Improvement

• Platform ownership. Serve as the primary owner and administrator of the company's centralized work-management platform, creating and maintaining consistent project structures, templates, stages, labels, permissions, and reporting standards.
• Project setup. Translate approved initiatives into practical project plans with defined scope, deliverables, owners, due dates, milestones, dependencies, decision points, and completion criteria.
• System accuracy. Maintain the system as the reliable source of project status, ensuring tasks are current, supporting files and decisions are documented, and completed work is properly closed and archived.
• Daily execution. Review active projects daily, follow up on overdue or stalled items, identify emerging risks, and escalate issues before they affect customers, schedules, cost, or production commitments.
• Project governance. Establish a consistent intake, prioritization, kickoff, status-update, change-control, and closeout process for internal projects.
• Portfolio coordination. Manage multiple projects simultaneously while balancing urgency, business impact, resource constraints, and cross-functional dependencies.

• Team alignment. Coordinate project activity among Sales, Order Management, Production, Service, and other supporting teams so requirements, responsibilities, schedules, handoffs, and customer-update ownership are clear.
• Collaboration. Collaborate with the Business Development team. When creating, maintaining, or revising processes, engage the Business Transformation Manager to support the company's standardized format for all standard operating procedures.
• Meeting leadership. Facilitate project kickoffs, recurring status reviews, working sessions, and closeout reviews; publish clear action items, owners, decisions, and due dates after each meeting.
• Handoff quality. Confirm that sales commitments and internal and external customer requirements are accurately transferred into order documentation, production planning, and service planning before work advances.
• Communication monitoring. Monitor the project-management system to confirm that the assigned Sales, Service, Order Management, or other customer-facing owner is providing required updates to internal and external customers and documenting those updates in the project record.
• Issue resolution. Identify conflicting priorities, unclear ownership, missing information, and resource constraints; bring the right leaders together to reach timely decisions.
• Accountability. Build strong working relationships across departments while respectfully holding contributors accountable for commitments and required updates.
• Executive initiatives. Support special initiatives assigned by executive leadership and provide discipline follow-through from initial concept through implementation and stabilization.

• Process mapping. Review and document current workflows, roles, approvals, controls, handoffs, and systems used in key internal processes, including the movement of work from sale or request through order entry, production, service, delivery, and closeout.
• Process audits. Conduct routine operational process audits by sampling projects and transactions, reviewing supporting documentation, interviewing process owners, and testing adherence to approved procedures.
• Gap identification. Identify control gaps, inconsistent practices, duplicate work, bottlenecks, missed approvals, handoff failures, and sources of rework or delay.
• Corrective action. Document findings in a clear, fact-based manner; assign corrective actions with owners and due dates; and verify that agreed improvements are implemented and sustained.
• Process improvement. Partner with functional leaders to simplify and standardize procedures while preserving appropriate controls, customer requirements, and departmental accountability.
• Documentation. Maintain current process maps, standard operating procedures, checklists, and handoff requirements for the workflows within the role's assigned scope.
• Root-cause analysis. Use recurring issues and project data to support root-cause analysis and recommend sustainable solutions rather than temporary workarounds.

• Executive reporting. Provide concise weekly and monthly reporting on overall project health, milestone performance, overdue items, blocked work, key decisions, emerging risks, and corrective-action status.
• Performance visibility. Develop dashboards and practical metrics that show whether projects are moving on time and whether internal processes are becoming more reliable.
• Training. Train users on project-management standards and effective use of the work-management platform, including expectations for ownership, updates, documentation, and task closure. Lead mandatory project-management and platform training for newly hired managers within their first two weeks of employment, coordinating with senior leadership to reinforce expectations and support consistent integration into the company's operating culture.
• Adoption. Promote consistent adoption across teams and address habits that reduce visibility, such as managing project commitments only through email, informal conversations, or disconnected personal lists.
• Communication. Communicate directly, professionally, and with the appropriate sense of urgency at all levels of the organization.

• Strong written and verbal communication, meeting facilitation, organization, follow-up, and problem-solving skills.
• Proficiency with standard office productivity, reporting, and data-analysis tools.
• Project-management, Lean, Six Sigma, or process-improvement training or certification is a plus.

• Bachelor's degree in business, operations, project management, supply chain, or a related field; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• Three to five years of experience managing cross-functional projects, operational initiatives, or process-improvement work.
• Demonstrated experience using digital work-management, customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to coordinate tasks, workflows, dependencies, deadlines, documentation, and reporting.
• Experience coordinating work among sales, order administration, production, manufacturing, service, distribution, or related operational teams in a customer-driven environment is strongly preferred.
• Experience reviewing processes, testing compliance with procedures, documenting findings, and tracking corrective actions is preferred.

• Ownership and follow-through. Takes responsibility for moving work to completion and does not allow commitments to disappear between meetings.
• Cross-functional influence. Builds cooperation without relying solely on formal authority.
• Constructive accountability. Is comfortable asking direct questions, challenging incomplete updates, and escalating risks professionally.
• Systems thinking. Understands how a decision or failure in one department affects downstream teams, schedules, costs, and customers.
• Attention to detail. Maintains accurate project information while keeping focus on the larger business outcome.
• Customer focus. Keeps customer requirements visible and ensures the responsible customer-facing owner provides and documents timely updates.
• Sound judgment. Distinguishes routine follow-up from issues that require leadership attention or a formal corrective action.
• Continuous improvement mindset. Looks for practical ways to simplify work, strengthen controls, reduce rework, and improve execution.
• Discretion. Handles internal project, personnel, customer, and process information appropriately.

The Project Manager is authorized to establish project tracking requirements, request timely status updates and supporting information, schedule cross-functional working sessions, document risks and decisions, and escalate unresolved issues through the appropriate leadership channels.

This position does not replace Sales, Service, Order Management, or another designated customer-facing owner in communicating with customers.

The Project Manager verifies that required communication occurs and is documented when updates are missing from the system.

Functional leaders remain accountable for departmental decisions, resources, and the quality of work produced by their teams.

The role’s initial scope is centered on the responsibilities described above.

As the organization’s project-management capability matures, the position may help extend common project standards, visibility, communication, and accountability across additional teams and company segments.

This evolution would embed project-management practices closer to the work while preserving functional ownership and leadership accountability.

Illustrative opportunity.

Finance and Inventory could collaborate in real time through shared workflows, milestones, evidence requirements, and exception tracking to strengthen process execution and audit completion and improve the accuracy and timeliness of financial measures.

Any expansion beyond the initial scope would be phased according to leadership priorities, organizational readiness, and demonstrated business value.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; and talk or hear.

The employee is occasionally required to stand and walk.

The employee must frequently lift and/or move up to 20 pounds.

Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.