Water Distribution Operator Jobs in Rhode Island

Worthington Enterprises | Amtrol
Worthington Enterprises | Amtrol designs, manufactures, and distributes pressure vessels, expansion tanks, well tanks, and water system solutions for residential, commercial, industrial, and OEM markets. The facility supports new product development, engineering, manufacturing, and distribution, delivering high-quality products that improve water quality, pressure management, and system reliability for customers across North America.
Operations Manager
The Operations Manager is responsible for leading the overall manufacturing operations at the West Warwick facility, ensuring the safe, efficient, and cost-effective production of high-quality products that meet customer demand. Reporting directly to the Senior Business Director, this role serves as a key operational leader and strategic partner, collaborating to define and execute business priorities while leading the day-to-day initiatives required to improve facility performance and support long-term growth.
The Operations Manager translates business strategy into actionable operational plans, driving execution across safety, people development, production performance, quality, cost, delivery, and continuous improvement. This role provides leadership in manufacturing operations, including Safety, Quality, Production, and Transformation, while partnering cross-functionally with Engineering, Maintenance, Supply Chain, Planning, Human Resources, Commercial, and Finance to build organizational capability and achieve sustainable results.
The Operations Manager is accountable to establish a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement while leading activities that strengthen performance, capacity, and future readiness of the West Warwick facility.
This position will have (5) direct reports.
Primary Responsibilities
Safety, Quality & Regulatory Leadership

• Lead a safety-first operating culture across manufacturing, ensuring compliance with company standards, OSHA requirements, environmental expectations, and established safe work practices.
• Drive proactive risk reduction through safety observations, corrective actions, training, hazard identification, and disciplined follow-through on operational safety priorities.
• Own operational quality performance and partner with Quality and Engineering Departments to reduce scrap, rework, customer complaints, and process variation while strengthening root-cause corrective action.
• Ensure manufacturing execution supports applicable product, customer, ASME, and other regulatory or quality-system requirements.

Operational Excellence, WBS and Continuous Improvement

• Lead daily manufacturing operations across West Warwick value streams to safely achieve production, schedule conformance, throughput, labor efficiency, quality, and customer delivery requirements.
• Establish clear daily and weekly operating priorities, remove barriers to execution, and ensure timely escalation and recovery plans when performance is at risk.
• Drive disciplined management of WIP, rework, production flow, and inventory movement to improve visibility, reduce disruption, and support on-time delivery.
• Translate S&OP, customer demand, and business priorities into executable operating plans, balancing capacity, staffing, equipment availability, material readiness, and changing customer requirements.
• Lead deployment and sustainment of the Worthington Business System (WBS), including daily management, huddles, Managing for Daily Improvement (MDI), visual management, standard work, and structured problem solving.
• Use value-stream thinking, data, and lean methodologies to improve flow, productivity, uptime, labor utilization, quality, and controllable cost.

People Leadership & Organizational Capability

• Lead, coach, and develop Operations leadership and shop-floor teams, establishing clear expectations, accountability, performance management, and succession plans.
• Build a strong leadership pipeline through development of managers, supervisors, group leads, and high-potential employees while strengthening technical and operational capability.
• Partner with Human Resources Business Partner to improve staffing, onboarding, training, qualification, retention, engagement, and cross-training aligned with business needs.
• Create an inclusive, high-accountability culture where leaders are visible on the floor, employees are engaged in problem solving, and teams understand how their work connects to business performance.

Strategy, Financial Performance & Growth

• Serve as a strategic partner to the Senior Business Director, helping define facility priorities and leading execution of strategic initiatives across the West Warwick operation.
• Own operational performance against budget and key cost drivers, including labor, overtime, scrap, rework, productivity, supplies, and other controllable manufacturing costs.
• Support new product introduction, business growth, and manufacturing expansion by ensuring operational readiness, staffing, training, process capability, and cross-functional alignment.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Operations, Engineering, Business, Supply Chain, or a related discipline preferred; equivalent manufacturing leadership experience will be considered.
• 5+ years with manufacturing leadership experience with responsibility for safety, quality, delivery, cost, people, and continuous improvement.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing operations, production systems, equipment capability, capacity planning, labor management, and material flow.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical capability with experience using operational data to identify root causes, prioritize actions, and deliver measurable improvement.
• Working knowledge of lean manufacturing and daily management systems; experience with value-stream improvement, standard work, visual management, and structured problem solving preferred.
• Strong financial and business acumen with the ability to understand operational cost drivers, budgets, productivity, and return on improvement investments.

Leadership Traits for Success

• People & Culture Leader: Develops high-performing teams through coaching, clear accountability, employee development, and a strong culture of engagement and ownership.
• Continuous Improvement Mindset: Challenges current performance, applies data to solve problems, and creates sustainable operating systems.
• Cross-Functional Leader: Builds alignment across functions, communicates clearly, and makes timely decisions in support of the customer and business.

About Us
Our Company is proud to have a dynamic and inclusive workforce where employees are empowered to innovate, thrive and grow. We believe that each employee's unique strengths contribute to the success of our organization. This belief extends to how we consider our job applicants. Your talents may align with this position or other opportunities within our organization. Apply today to start unlocking your career potential with Worthington Enterprises.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in the application and hiring process. If you are interested in employment with Worthington Enterprises and need an accommodation or assistance using the careers website, please contact careers@wthg.com.
Worthington Enterprises (NYSE: WOR) is a designer and manufacturer of market-leading brands that help improve everyday life by elevating spaces and experiences. The Company operates with two primary business units: Building Products and Consumer Products.
The Building Products segment includes cooking, heating, cooling and water solutions, architectural and acoustical grid ceilings and metal framing and accessories. The Consumer Products segment provides solutions for the tools, outdoor living and celebrations categories. Product brands within the Worthington Enterprises portfolio include Balloon Time®, Bernzomatic®, Coleman® (propane cylinders), CoMet®, Elgen, Garden Weasel®, General®, HALO™, Hawkeye™, Level5 Tools®, Mag Torch®, NEXI™, Pactool International®, PowerCore™, Ragasco®, Well-X-Trol® and XLite™, among others.
Founded in 1955 as Worthington Industries, Worthington Enterprises follows a people-first Philosophy with earning money for its shareholders as its first corporate goal. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Worthington Enterprises and its joint ventures employ approximately 6,000 people throughout North America and Europe.