Operational Excellence Lead
$125,000–$125,000 year
On-site · Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Job Summary
Operational Excellence Lead owns the loop between UET (Unquality Event Tracking) and our Shepherd Standards, ensuring the closure of gaps through defined plays and playbooks. The role defines patterns, drafts plays that need to exist, and ensures adoption across branches. Responsibilities include triaging errors, routing patterns to the right functional teams, partnering with Playbook Owners to translate playbooks into runnable training, building and maintaining data-driven dashboards, coaching managers on the error conversation, and delivering measurable improvements quarterly. The role emphasizes cross-functional collaboration (shipping, inside sales, VMI, branch expansion) and requires strong analytical, communication, and organizational skills to drive continuous improvement across Shepherd’s operating system. The position requires ownership of the error lifecycle, cadence planning, and the evolution of playbooks to reduce customer/contractor friction and improve reliability.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in operations, supply chain, process improvement, quality management, or a closely related field
- Demonstrated track record of leading process improvement work where you had to influence people you did not directly manage
- Strong analytical capability — comfortable working in data, identifying patterns, and translating findings into recommendations leadership can act on
- Excellent written and verbal communication — you can write a one-pager that an executive will read and act on
- Comfort with structured friction — you can hold peers and senior leaders accountable to commitments without making it personal
- Bias toward action and follow-through — you do not let things drop
- Strongly Preferred: Experience in distribution, wholesale, or industrial supply
- Strongly Preferred: Eclipse ERP experience
- Strongly Preferred: Power BI or comparable BI/visualization tools
- Strongly Preferred: Lean, Six Sigma, or similar continuous improvement training
- Strongly Preferred: Experience designing or delivering operational training in partnership with subject-matter experts
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