Guided Search Partners (GSP)
Guided Search Partners is an Executive Search firm built on Trust, Transparency, Specialization, and Long-term Relationships.
We connect high-performing professionals with organizations that value people, performance, and growth, helping leaders find roles where they can make an impact and build meaningful careers.

About the Opportunity
We’re supporting a search for a Molding Manager with an automotive manufacturing operation in Michigan. This role will provide people leadership across molding and extrusion while serving as the plant’s technical authority for injection molding. The Molding Manager will lead approximately 20 direct reports plus an apprentice and will focus on process improvement, troubleshooting, scrap reduction, cycle-time optimization, changeovers, and team development.

What You’ll Do
You’ll lead molding and extrusion operations with a strong focus on technical performance, continuous improvement, and team leadership.

Key areas of focus include:

• Evaluate molding and extrusion processes against global standards and identify gaps
• Lead scrap reduction and material-usage improvement initiatives
• Improve molding cycle times and process stability
• Advance SMED and reduce changeover time
• Troubleshoot new and existing molding processes
• Troubleshoot tooling, automation, and equipment issues
• Support equipment installation and tooling design
• Support process documentation and technical assessments
• Train the team and implement product and process improvements
• Set expectations, coach performance, and build accountability
• Strengthen day-to-day management across molding and extrusion
• Mentor the apprentice and develop technical capability within the team
• Partner with Quality, Engineering, Maintenance, Production, Purchasing, and plant leadership
• Support safety performance and reliable delivery

Who You Are
You are a hands-on injection molding leader with strong technical processing expertise and experience in automotive manufacturing.

You are comfortable leading a team while also serving as a technical resource for molding processes, troubleshooting, continuous improvement, and equipment-related issues. You can coach employees, improve accountability, and drive measurable improvements in scrap, cycle time, process stability, and changeovers.

Preferred Experience & Attributes
• Hands-on injection molding processing expertise required
• Automotive injection molding experience required
• Experience supporting OEM or Tier 1 automotive customer requirements
• Leadership and team management experience
• Demonstrated success with troubleshooting and continuous improvement
• Experience reducing scrap and material usage
• Experience improving molding cycle times and process stability
• Experience with SMED and changeover improvement
• Experience troubleshooting tooling, automation, and equipment issues
• Extrusion familiarity preferred
• Two-shot molding experience preferred
• Soft and rigid multi-material molding experience is especially relevant
• Part design knowledge is helpful but not required
• Experience developing processors, technical employees, or apprentices
• Technical depth and leadership capability are more important than a rigid years-of-experience requirement

Why This Role Matters
This is a high-impact role with visible opportunities to improve scrap, cycle time, changeovers, process stability, and team performance. The operation has a healthy book of business with established automotive customers, a clean indoor molding environment, and strong safety performance at the time of intake.