Candidate Overview
The candidate is a highly experienced senior manufacturing and product development leader with over 20 years’ experience within ceramics manufacturing. They bring a rare blend of operational factory leadership and hands-on New Product Development (NPD) expertise, with a proven track record of driving cost reduction, productivity improvement, and profitable product innovation.
Having operated at Factory Manager and NPD leadership level, the candidate has led full manufacturing start-ups, operational turnarounds, and structured product development programmes. They have overseen production, planning, safety, quality, cost control, and continuous improvement across multi-site environments.
Commercially astute and technically grounded, the candidate has successfully delivered up to 30% manufacturing cost reductions, implemented advanced manufacturing technologies, and built robust quality and compliance frameworks to support scalable growth and improved product standards.
Core Expertise
- Full-cycle New Product Development (NPD)
- Category & product lifecycle management
- Ceramics manufacturing operations leadership
- Cost reduction & margin improvement
- Quality management systems & regulatory compliance
- Factory start-up, stabilisation & turnaround
Selected Career Achievements
- Achieved up to 30% overall manufacturing cost reductions through operational optimisation and workforce efficiency initiatives.
- Improved productivity by 6% annually through implementation of advanced manufacturing technologies.
- Achieved profitability within six months of leading a ceramics manufacturing facility turnaround.
- Reduced non-compliance incidents and streamlined quality documentation processes by 30%, strengthening technical governance and certification processes.
Leadership Profile
The candidate is a strategic yet hands-on leader, experienced in managing teams ranging from 60 to 150+ employees across production, quality, and development functions. They combine operational depth with commercial awareness- ensuring that product innovation aligns with cost targets, margin objectives, and market positioning.
Ideal Next Role
The candidate is seeking a Product Manager role within ceramics or related manufacturing sectors, where they can leverage their deep industry knowledge, technical credibility, and commercial insight to drive profitable product strategy, innovation pipelines, and category growth.
They are particularly well suited to businesses looking to strengthen NPD governance, improve cost-to-serve, and align manufacturing capability with market opportunity.
Interested in learning more? Please contact Imagine Executive Solutions for a confidential discussion.