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 partnering with a packaging manufacturer seeking a Plant Manager to lead a 24/7 operation at a key facility in South Carolina. This is an important leadership hire for a plant that is well staffed, but still building the discipline, accountability, and culture needed to reach the next level.

The right person will bring a strong background in plant leadership, safety, quality, and operational reliability. This role is well suited for a hands-on leader who can motivate teams, improve maintenance and performance, and help shift the culture toward stronger ownership, communication, and follow-through. There is real opportunity here to make an impact by improving scrap, labor efficiency, plant discipline, and overall execution.

What You’ll Do

• Lead plant operations across production, maintenance, quality, warehouse, and support functions.

• Drive performance around safety, quality, delivery, cost, and people.

• Maintain strong floor presence, resolve issues quickly, and ensure follow-through.

• Build a disciplined operating cadence around accountability, action tracking, and daily execution.

• Improve plant performance through better maintenance, uptime, scrap reduction, and process stability.

• Manage budgets, forecasts, capital execution, and plant cost performance.

• Partner with Finance, IT, Planning, and other functions to improve reporting, controls, and inventory accuracy.

• Lead root cause and corrective action efforts tied to customer complaints, defects, and recurring issues.

• Develop and lead the plant’s annual improvement charter aligned to company priorities.

• Strengthen training, leadership capability, and engagement across the plant.

Who You Are

You’re a hands-on plant leader who knows how to raise standards while building trust. You understand that safety, quality, and reliability are non-negotiable, and you know how to coach teams toward better habits and stronger performance. You bring urgency, accountability, and follow-through, and you are comfortable addressing problems directly while keeping teams motivated and aligned.

Preferred Experience & Attributes

• 10+ years of manufacturing operations leadership experience, ideally within plastics manufacturing.

• 5+ years of plant leadership with broad cross-functional responsibility.

• Proven success improving safety, quality, delivery, cost, and team performance.

• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, maintenance, quality systems, and warehousing.

• Experience improving scrap, downtime, uptime, and process discipline.

• Working knowledge of ERP or SAP-driven operations and inventory controls.

• Strong financial acumen with experience managing budgets, cost performance, and plant results.

• Lean or continuous improvement mindset with practical implementation experience.

• Clear communicator, team builder, and floor-focused leader.

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Operations, Business, Supply Chain, or a related field preferred. Equivalent experience will be considered.

• Experience across multiple processing platforms is attractive but not required.

Why This Role Matters

This role is central to improving plant culture, operational discipline, and overall performance. The Plant Manager will help drive alignment with corporate goals while building a safer, more accountable, and better-performing operation. With opportunities tied to scrap reduction, labor efficiency, maintenance improvement, and stronger execution, this is a high-impact role for a leader who wants to shape results and influence culture.

Reporting Structure

• Reports to the Director of Operations.

• Leads a team of 7 direct reports across warehouse, quality, production, facilities, materials, and process engineering.

• Oversees a plant of approximately 70 employees in a 24/7, 3-shift operation.

• Partners with corporate leadership and serves as part of the Operations Leadership Team.