Vice President of Operations

Company: Albert Paper Products — Irvington, NJ (on-site)

Reports to: President / CEO

About Albert

Albert Paper Products is a corrugated and folding-carton packaging company serving consumer brands, with both in-house manufacturing and a distribution business. Under new ownership, the company is investing in people, equipment and systems to scale well beyond its current size. We are putting in a new ERP, a CRM-driven sales process and a formal operating cadence. This role owns making those work together.

The role

The VP of Operations owns the operating system of the business: how an opportunity becomes a quote, a quote becomes an order, an order becomes a scheduled job, and a job ships on time at the expected margin. The role has three areas of ownership, connected by one idea: every commitment the company makes, to a customer or to itself, is tracked with data and has an owner.

This is an executive role and the President’s right hand. It takes the key operations and throughput responsibilities off the President’s desk, adds maturity and strength to the management team, and frees the President to focus on strategic initiatives and growth.

Much of what this person will run already exists. Some of it is nearly complete and needs accountability and refinement; some is only partly built. The job is to refine, build where necessary, and above all execute and drive careful accountability.

Responsibilities1. Production planning and optimization

• Own production planning: refine the planning and scheduling process, build where gaps exist, and make sure it runs predictably every week across in-house manufacturing and bought-out product.
• Lead the plant / production manager, who reports to this role and runs the floor day to day.
• Own the weekly throughput target and the plan to hit it: capacity, labor, materials, and sequencing.
• Maintain the plant capacity model and use it to set realistic promise dates and identify bottlenecks.
• Drive on-time delivery, backlog reduction, and gross margin dollars per production hour.
• Evaluate make-vs-buy and capital equipment decisions with clear return analysis.

1. Revenue operations

• Own the close process: run a disciplined pipeline review with each salesperson covering stage definitions, next steps, close dates, and honest forecasts.
• Own quote conversion: the quoting tool, turnaround time, pricing discipline, margin floors, and the rate at which quotes become orders.
• Own the sales team’s quotas, set with the President’s approval, and hold salespeople accountable to them.
• Make sure the sales strategy and systems the CRO sets up are executed day to day, so the President does not have to check that they are.
• Connect the sales forecast to the production plan so sales sells what the plant can deliver, and the plant prepares for what sales will close.
• Track lead flow, conversion, and win/loss reasons with the CRO and marketing partner.

1. Systems, KPIs and accountability

• Lead the ERP implementation through go-live and own the system afterward.
• Integrate ERP and CRM so there is one version of the truth from lead to cash.
• Define the company KPI set, publish it on a fixed weekly and monthly rhythm, and make sure each metric has a named owner.
• Run the weekly operating meeting and follow through on commitments.
• Supply clean operating data for monthly financial reporting and board materials.

What success looks like

First 90 days

• Weekly production schedule published and trusted by the floor and by sales.
• Weekly pipeline review running with consistent stage definitions.
• First version of the KPI scorecard in use.

First 12 months

• Weekly throughput target hit consistently, or backlog falling.
• ERP live and integrated with CRM; reporting comes from systems, not spreadsheets.
• Sales forecast accuracy and on-time delivery both measured and improving.
• Quote turnaround time materially shorter and quote conversion rate improving.

Qualifications

Required

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• 8+ years in manufacturing operations, with direct ownership of production planning or scheduling.
• Experience running a sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, or equivalent work connecting a sales forecast to a plant schedule.
• Sales or revenue operations exposure, with a working understanding of a managed close process: pipeline stages, forecasting, and quote conversion.
• Has led or been a core member of an ERP implementation.
• Strong analytical skills; builds their own reports and models.
• Track record of holding teams and peers accountable to commitments.

Preferred

• Packaging, corrugated, folding carton or commercial print experience.
• Experience in a company of $15–75M revenue, ideally founder-owned or under professional institutional asset management.
• Hands-on CRM administration (HubSpot).
• Engineering, supply chain or operations degree; lean or continuous improvement training.

Personal attributes

• Direct, low-ego, comfortable on the plant floor and in a board meeting.
• Favors simple systems people will use rather than elaborate ones they won’t.
• Says what is true about the numbers, early.

Compensation

Compensation: $165,000–$195,000 base salary, plus annual bonus opportunity and eligibility for the company’s equity incentive plan. Benefits: Medical, dental and life insurance; 401(k) retirement plan; paid time off.

Pay: $165,000.00 - $195,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off

Ability to Commute:

• Irvington, NJ 07111 (Required)

Work Location: In person