About this Industrial Engineering Manager 2 role at Northrop Grumman
Description
At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.Northrop Grumman is in need of an Industrial Engineering Manager 2 to work at its Elkton, Maryland facility.
Northrop Grumman Propulsion Systems and Controls (PS&C) facility in Elkton, Maryland began solid-propellant rocket operations in 1948. Today, the Elkton PS&C facility designs, develops, and produces solid-propellant propulsion and ordnance systems in programs professionally managed for a wide variety of Government and commercial customers. The facility also serves as the hub for offsite engineering and test facilities in Ronkonkoma, NY and Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
Elkton, Maryland is located on the Upper Chesapeake Bay, midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Discover charming small towns, parks with miles of trails, specialty and antique shops, award winning restaurants, and inns. You can hike, bike, camp, bird watch, ride horseback, or drop a fishing line. Five rivers, Chesapeake Bay and the C&D Canal can be explored by boat or by land. Experience panoramic views from Turkey Point Lighthouse on a bluff overlooking the Bay, or from the banks of the C&D Canal where ships from around the globe cruise. https://www.ccgov.org/government/tourism
The Industrial Engineering Manager builds, develops, and mentors a high‑performing industrial engineering team that supports the Elkton production system. This role provides strategic direction for the analysis and design of operations—optimizing workflows, standards, and equipment layouts to improve efficiency, increase throughput, and eliminate bottlenecks across the production system.
The manager owns and governs methods and standards that optimize the utilization of facilities, equipment, and personnel—in partnership with Manufacturing, Quality, and Facilities—to strengthen safety culture, reduce cost, increase throughput, and improve product quality across plant operations. They drive improvements and ensure findings translate into practical, repeatable solutions.
The role champions continuous improvement activity by applying lean methodology and design‑for‑manufacturing principles to adopt and standardize practices that are sustained across the production system. The manager sets expectations for standardized use of operational data and simulation tools to develop visual factory metrics, drive data‑based decisions, and manages site capacity and utilization modeling – providing true capacity‑based site planning/scheduling grounded in throughput, capacity, and capability analyses.
The position also drives material‑handling and WIP reduction improvements, supports automation and robotics deployment, and ensures robust TPM practices for critical equipment. Additionally, the manager leads early‑stage Design for Manufacturing (DFM) activities in collaboration with program design teams to ensure new designs align with future capacity and capability.
Success in this position requires a strong focus on accident prevention and safety, along with a well‑balanced blend of technical leadership, people development, operational execution, and continuous improvement within a complex production system.
Core Responsibilities
- Build, develop, and mentor a high‑performing industrial engineering team supporting plant and production operations; set priorities, goals, and performance expectations for the group.
- Provide strategic direction for analysis and design of operations, optimizing workflows and standards base development, and equipment layouts (VSM, line balancing, crew cycling, manufacturing execution/recovery planning, capacity/utilization) to improve efficiency, throughput, and bottleneck removal; review and approve major recommendations.
- Own and govern methods and standards that maximize utilization of production facilities, equipment, and personnel (manpower planning, skill matrices, recovery scheduling, TPM/L2L concepts), ensuring consistent deployment across the site.
- Sponsor and oversee studies in cost control, cost reduction, inventory control, quality improvement, and production record systems; ensure teams translate findings into practical, implemented solutions with measurable impact.
- Champion continuous improvement initiatives, proven knowledge and success using lean tools (current and future state value stream mapping, Kaizen/AIW, 5S/POU, standard work, TPM, RCCA/defect analysis) and drive design for manufacturing improvements to remove roadblocks and ensure alignment with safety, schedule, cost, and quality objectives.
- Set expectations and standardize use of CORE, Tableau, MES data, and simulation tools (e.g., FlexSim) to develop visual shop metrics (including uptime metrics for critical equipment) and drive data‑based decisions, manpower forecasting, and improvement roadmaps; steward the site’s capacity and utilization modeling capability.
- Direct the development and implementation of operating method and facility changes; provide leadership to integrate accident‑prevention and safety improvements into all industrial engineering activities.
- Lead cross‑functional workshops and training, ensuring standardized practices are adopted and sustained across manufacturing, facilities, safety, quality, and supply chain.
- Provide guidance in defining the vision for manufacturing systems architectures; prioritize and sponsor system and workflow improvements that enable data‑driven decisions and shop‑systems maturity.
- Provide management oversight of realistic scheduling and capacity-based site planning and capital-planning efforts (including data mining, ROI/risk justification, and business-case development), ensure effective application of earned-value management (CPI, SPI, TCPI) to monitor schedule and cost performance and support accurate ETC/EAC development, and guide the preparation of refined BOEs for proposals based on throughput, capacity, and capability analyses.
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- Provide management oversight to optimize delivery routes, packaging, and point-of-use logistics using lean solutions, and develop min/max inventory logic for parts consumption to support efficient, continuous material flow.
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Industrial or Manufacturing Engineering or related STEM field plus 10 or more years of relevant industrial or manufacturing engineering experience. Will consider those with a master’s degree and 8 or more years of relevant industrial or manufacturing engineering experience.
- Demonstrated leadership experience
- Strong industrial engineering and operations background with demonstrated impact in manufacturing and production environments (standards development, workflow analysis, line balancing, layout optimization, simulation, statistical analysis, forecasting), and a track record of directing engineering or manufacturing teams, setting clear-concise priorities, and driving closure on actions.
- Proven ability to translate analytical results into practical, implemented improvements in production operations.
- Regularly applies ingenuity and creativity to resolve novel or high impact issues in manufacturing, cost, quality and safety performance.
- Ability to clearly communicate technical approaches, influence cross functional teams, and prioritize high impact improvements.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills; able to interface effectively at all levels of the organization (i.e provides ongoing and immediate feedback, open sharing of information and knowledge)
- Ability to obtain a Secret clearance, US citizenship is a pre-requisite
Preferred Qualifications:
- Active Secret or higher clearance
- Experience in working in an aerospace manufacturing environment
This position falls under a Federal Explosives License issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for this location. Candidates hired into this role will be required to complete and submit an Employee Possessor Questionnaire to ATF for approval to be a possessor.
