Overview
Vice President, Manufacturing & Engineering Excellence – Specialty Chemicals Jobs in Greater Houston at The Avery Point Group, Inc – Executive Search Catalysts for Change™
Title: Vice President, Manufacturing & Engineering Excellence – Specialty Chemicals
Company: The Avery Point Group, Inc – Executive Search Catalysts for Change™
Location: Greater Houston
Vice President, Manufacturing & Engineering Excellence
Retained Search
Why you should be interested in this role:
This is the operating seat that defines the next leg of value creation for an industry-leading, diverse specialty chemicals platform owned by a private equity firm. EBITDA margin has expanded materially under the current ownership through price, mix, and acquisitions. The next leg of value has to come from operations. Yield, reliability, working capital, capital efficiency, cost discipline, and quality consistency that protect the growth story in regulated and customer-spec markets.
This is not a corporate manufacturing role riding a system somebody else built. With sites across the United States, Europe, and Asia. A spectrum of plant maturity that runs from sites needing stabilization to sites ready to be pushed to a higher level of performance. A matrixed organization where the business unit leaders hold the commercial P&L and the VP holds the operational standards, the safety culture, the capital governance, and the manufacturing excellence agenda.
The work gets done in the space between those two accountabilities.
The candidate who fills this role will have done it before. They will install the operating system, hold the SQDC framework with safety as the foundation, triage the network, and apply different operating postures to different sites, and earn the trust of business unit leaders they do not control on a solid line. They will move EBITDA in the right way, inside the framework, week after week, until the gains are durable.
Role CTQs (Critical to Quality)
- 15+ years in specialty or fine chemicals manufacturing, with personal accountability for a global multi-site network in a recent or current role
- Direct experience inside a private equity operating environment is a plus, with a track record of personally owning an operations EBITDA commitment inside a value creation plan and delivering against it
- Demonstrated ability to build and hold credibility with commercial leaders who did not report to them, and to use that credibility to drive operational change that moved the business
- Multi-site portfolio triage discipline. Has personally categorized sites as turnaround, traction, and transformation, and applied the right operating posture to each
- Safety record that moved in the right direction during the same period EBITDA was delivered. Process safety, occupational safety, and contractor safety all sit on this desk
- Engineering degree required (chemical engineering preferred, mechanical engineering acceptable). MBA strongly preferred but not required if commercial fluency is otherwise evident
Position Summary
Company: Industry-Leading, Diverse Specialty Chemicals Platform (Confidential)
Industry: Specialty Chemicals
Location
Houston Metro Area (Relocation Required)
Travel: Up to 60% for site engagement across plants globally (US, Europe, Asia)
Reporting: Reports directly to the CEO; Quality, Engineering, and two regional Operations Directors report into this seat
Ownership: Private Equity Owned
Compensation: Competitive base salary, performance bonus, and long-term equity participation, commensurate with experience
Company Profile
Our client is an industry-leading, diverse specialty chemicals company serving global customers. The company operates multiple sites across the United States, Europe, and Asia, with a global workforce of approximately 1,400. Annual revenue is just under $1B
Position Description and Responsibilities
- Operational Value Creation and EBITDA Delivery. Drive operations EBITDA against the value creation plan over the next three plus years through disciplined SQDC performance. The scoreboard is EBITDA delivered the right way, inside the framework, through the business unit leaders.
- Safety as the Non-Negotiable Foundation. Own process safety, occupational safety, and contractor safety across a Responsible Care footprint with regulated pharma customers. Safety trends must move in the right direction at the same time EBITDA is delivered.
- Portfolio Triage and Operating Posture. Read each site correctly and match the operating posture to its condition. Triage is built jointly with each business unit leader so the plan holds when the work gets difficult.
- Operating System Design and Installation. Install a focused operating system from a small number of high-leverage elements: daily management, tier meetings, standard work, visual management, problem solving, and capital governance. Sequence the elements and the resource flow differently depending on each site's posture.
- Matrix Leadership and Business Unit Partnership. Earn and hold credibility with business unit leaders who do not report to this seat on a solid line. Translate operational discipline into commercial language and enforce consistent standards across the network. The mechanism is personal credibility, not position power.
- Quality and Regulated Customer Credibility. Lead the Quality function and carry personal credibility with regulated pharma customers, auditors, and the sponsor. Day-to-day quality system work is carried by a strong Quality Director who reports into this seat.
- Bench Strength and Leadership Development. Build site leadership capability, promote people, and develop successors. Gains have to hold through the organization, not depend on constant intervention from the VP.
- Capital and Engineering Governance. Deploy capital where debottlenecking, automation, process redesign, or targeted capex unlocks the next level of productivity and EBITDA. Tie investments to returns and make sure the BU leader backs the decisions.
Position CTQ+S: Technical and Experience Requirements
- 15+ years in specialty or fine chemicals manufacturing, with current or recent personal accountability for a global multi-site network
- Demonstrated ability to walk into any plant and read it on safety, quality, delivery, and cost within an hour. The diagnostic skill that makes triage possible
- Personal experience installing and holding operating systems that drove measurable improvement across a multi-site network
- Real multi-region governance experience across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Common operating standards held across time zones, languages, and regulatory environments
- Lived inside a private equity operating cadence at least once. Quarterly board reporting, quarterly EBITDA bridges, value creation plan accountability, working capital discipline. Strong preference for compressed hold cycle experience
- Personal credibility with regulated pharma customers. Familiarity with cGMP environments and customer audit discipline
- Capital governance experience. Has personally owned capital allocation, project execution, and capex returns across a multi-site network
- Engineering degree required (chemical engineering preferred, mechanical engineering acceptable). MBA strongly preferred but not required if commercial fluency is otherwise evident
Position CTQ+S: Leadership and Behavioral Requirements
- Safety first by instinct. Leads with safety in language without being prompted. References describe them as someone who would stop operations over a near miss
- Business unit partnership by habit. Talks about commercial leaders as partners rather than obstacles. Can name specific BU relationships built and what those relationships produced
- Triage discipline. Reads sites quickly and accurately. Categorizes them. Adjusts posture without ego when the categorization turns out to be wrong
- Urgency without panic. Comfortable with a clock on the wall. Knows how to move fast without breaking the organization or the framework
- Commercially literate. Translates plant work into bridge math and into business unit language without effort
- Operator instincts over executive polish. Comfortable on the floor. Reads a plant by what they see and hear
- Plain spoken. Direct without being aggressive. Does not rely on slogans
- Builder of bench, not a single point of failure. Promotes people. Develops successors
- Does not need credit. Talks about what their teams accomplished and what is still running
- Resilient under quarterly pressure. Holds the framework even when it is easier to compromise
Who This Role Is Not For
- Not for the solid-line-only operator. Has only succeeded with direct authority over site leaders and never had to earn credibility with commercial partners they did not control. Will try to muscle the matrix and will lose the business unit leaders in the process.
- Not for the dollar deliverer with a bad safety record. Will not survive a serious incident in a Responsible Care environment. Safety and EBITDA must have moved in the right direction together in the candidate's track record.
- Not for the patient long-game operator. Strong in five to seven year holds but too slow for a compressed value creation clock. Will still be building the system when the buyer walks in the door.
- Not for the one-posture operator. Applies the same operating posture to every site in their network. Will fail on the sites that need a different posture from their comfort zone.
- Not for the pure continuous commodity operator. Wrong industry skills for a specialty platform where batch chemistry is the center.
The Avery Point Group, Inc. is a leading national executive search firm specializing in supply chain, operations management, continuous improvement, and private equity talent. We place transformation leadership across the country and bring deep expertise to the industries we serve.
