Chief Operating Officer Jobs in Kansas (NOW HIRING)

Manufacturing & Warehouse Operations | Wichita, Kansas | Full-Time, On-Site

Reports To: Chief Operating Officer

Direct Reports: Manufacturing Manager, Warehouse Manager, Maintenance

Location: Wichita, KS (on-site, plant-based role)

Open Road Brands is a Wichita, Kansas–based wholesale home décor company and one of the leading names in Americana and nostalgia-inspired lifestyle products. Our products are designed, manufactured, and shipped from our Wichita facility to retail partners across the country. We are a growing, roughly 100-person company with more customer demand than ever — and we are investing in the operational leadership to match it.

As part of a growth-driven restructuring of our operations organization, Open Road Brands is creating a single senior on-site leader who owns manufacturing and warehouse execution end to end — from raw material through production, staging, and shipped customer orders. The Plant General Manager reports to the COO and serves as the senior operations leader in our Wichita facility.

This is a builder’s role. The company has more demand than its current capacity comfortably supports, and the Plant General Manager’s mandate is to convert that demand into shipped dollars: increasing throughput, improving labor efficiency, tightening scheduling and capacity planning, connecting manufacturing and warehouse into one flow, and leading a practical, sustained Lean transformation. The right candidate will run today’s operation while building the systems that let the operation scale.

• Throughput & Scheduling — Take direct ownership of the production schedule, then improve schedule accuracy, attainment, and capacity visibility across manufacturing and warehouse.
• Labor Efficiency — Improve output per labor hour through better training, standard work, supervision, and labor deployment — building capacity through systems and flow, not just headcount.
• Manufacturing-to-Shipping Flow — Connect manufacturing, staging, warehouse, and shipping into one accountable value stream that reliably supports customer commitments and on-time, in-full delivery.
• Lean Foundation — Establish 5S, visual management, daily management, and root-cause problem solving as the facility’s operating system — practical, measurable, and sustained.

• Manufacturing systems, layout, equipment utilization, and production discipline across printing, paint, routing, finishing, assembly, and packaging.
• Warehouse execution: material flow, staging, picking, packing, loading, and shipment readiness.
• Weekly and monthly throughput, schedule attainment, and capacity planning — including looking months ahead at demand, labor, material, and equipment constraints.
• Operating budget and expense: labor, overtime, supplies, maintenance, scrap, rework, and avoidable cost.
• Staffing plans, supervisor accountability, and development of a stronger bench of operational leaders.
• Material availability, in partnership with purchasing, sourcing, and finance.
• Facility condition and safety: a clean, organized, customer-ready plant every day.

You are a high-energy, floor-connected operations leader with a strong operator’s instinct — the kind of leader who can walk the floor, see what is stuck, understand why it matters, and drive action before the issue shows up in a report. You lead through people, systems, numbers, and direct observation. You hold supervisors accountable, respect process discipline, and care about the actual product and the people who make it. You are strong enough strategically to build a best-in-class operation, and practical enough to know when a machine is down or labor is in the wrong place. You treat the operation like it is your own business.

• 10+ years of progressive manufacturing operations experience, including 5+ years leading multi-department teams through managers and supervisors.
• Plant, site, or value-stream leadership experience in a production environment.
• Demonstrated, hands-on Lean implementation (5S, standard work, visual/daily management, root-cause problem solving) that stuck.
• Ownership of production scheduling, capacity planning, and operating budgets.
• Track record of improving throughput and labor efficiency without simply adding headcount.

• Experience spanning both manufacturing and warehouse/distribution operations.
• Consumer products, décor, printing, wood products, or similar discrete manufacturing background.
• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, operations, business, or related field — or equivalent experience.

Open Road Brands offers a competitive compensation package, including an annual performance incentive plan tied to plant KPIs, and the company’s full benefits package. Compensation details are shared with candidates during the interview process.

Open Road Brands is an equal opportunity employer.