Job Title:  Director, Operations

Abaco Systems is a global leader in modular, high performance, open architecture, standards-based rugged embedded computing for the most demanding applications in defense and industry. Our products and solutions are found in high-profile military/aerospace sea, land and air programs, plus commercial and industrial organizations in which rugged reliability is mission critical.

Position Summary: 

The Operations Director is responsible for the leadership, guidance and direction of the Abaco Huntsville facility. This position requires planning, directing and coordinating the execution of production at a strategic level in the manufacturing and repair shops and will also be responsible for formulating policies, managing daily operational activities, and coordinating the use of materials and human resources toward a goal of maximum productivity.  The Operations Director will also be an active partner in ABACO’s Operational Excellence team to ensure we maintain best in class operations.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Safety as Culture: Ensuring a Safe Operating Environment, and actively participating and outlining requirements for Safety Training
• Quality Focus: Abaco’s reputation for ruggedized components is a core of our product portfolio, and the Operations Director is responsible for leading our Quality Organization, ensuring compliance to standards, and participating on Kaizen activity focused on further quality improvement
• Delivery Performance: Ensure that the organization is structured and has the talent, resources and organizational capability to meet customer quality, technical, and delivery expectations for product and desired customer turn-around times for repairs.
• Cost Performance: Establish strategies, objectives, capital requirements, material and labor requirements and budgets to support customer requirements and meet budget commitments.
• Manage and control expenses in accordance with approved budget.
• Meet or exceed measured objectives in sales, profit, turn-around time, employee/facility effectiveness and employee safety.
• Participate in the development and implementation of Abaco business strategy and demonstrate a readiness to support business objectives.
• Drive and support the overall continuous improvement initiatives within the facility; establishing metrics, measurements and tools to improve efficiency, effectiveness and communication.
• Give feedback to leadership and HR on talent needs and organizational capabilities needed to achieve higher levels of production improvement.
• People management from hiring and staffing through progressive discipline.
• Development and cross-training of technical staff and support groups.
• Coordinate and present performance reports to customers.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or other technical discipline or BS Business Administration with extensive production/manufacturing management experience.
• Proven record of success as a "hands on" operations management leader with at least 8-10 years of related experience.
• Production/manufacturing management in low volume / high mix (Engineered) product environment preferably in the electronics industry.
• Extensive knowledge and experience in successfully implementing and leading world class lean operations.  Prior work experience in working at organizations recognized as lean leading companies is a plus.

Qualifications:

• Strong analytical thinking, problem solving skills and communications skills (both written and oral) with attention to detail.
• Demonstrated ability and willingness to use AI tools to improve productivity, decision-making, work quality, and to reduce costs. The successful candidate must be able to identify appropriate AI use cases and critically evaluate AI-generated outputs.
• Proven ability to successfully handle multiple projects and meet critical deadlines.
• Must be a team player with excellent interpersonal skills and a commitment to relationship-building, both internally and externally.
• Must be self-directed and can work well under pressure, multi-task, and meet deadlines.
• Strong leadership, project management and organizational skills.
• From an operations perspective, exposure to continuous improvement best practices, such as lean manufacturing and JIT is necessary in order to achieve operational excellence.
• Strong customer relations skills.
• Knowledge of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, SAP or other related business software.

Abaco is a Department of Defense (DoD) supplier and as such employees may work with or be exposed to export controlled information and/or information that has been designated as classified information. This information may only be seen or handled by US citizens or qualified permanent residents or those with proper clearances.