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Plant Manager: Lead a High-Impact Metal Fabrication Plant

Pen Manufacturing · Anaheim, CA

Level
Manager
Team
Production
Experience asked
7+ years
Industry
Industrial
Posted
Recently

The role in 30 seconds

A management production role at Pen Manufacturing (industrial) in Anaheim, CA.

They ask for
7+ years
Tools it names
Root cause, AS9100, Capacity planning

Read from the posting. The full description is below.

From the plant jobs report · week of October 19, 2026

Production Engineer roles in California: typical posted base $122k–$177k.

Median of the low and high ends of 37 live postings that list pay, out of 111 production engineer openings in California, read from manufacturers' own careers sites.

California plant jobs report →Pay by team and state →What moves pay →

How this role compares

Against 110 other live production postings in California.

Base pay
Not listed in this posting

Typical $120k–$174k, from 31 postings that list pay.

Experience asked
More than usual (7+ vs 5+)

Similar roles usually ask 5+ years.

Skills these teams ask for most

  • New product launch 37%
  • Lean 30%
  • ✓ Root cause 27%
  • Automation 24%
  • Python 22%
  • ✓ Team leadership 22%

✓ = this posting asks for it too. % = share of similar postings that mention it.

Stands out: this posting asks for AS9100, which few similar roles mention. If you have it, lead with it.

It asks for 7+ years. If you're close, apply anyway: requirements are a wish list. Talk to someone doing this work there first.

At a glance

Pulled from the posting text. If it's not listed here, the posting didn't say.

How to get in at this plant

Five moves over a week or two. The first one takes ten minutes.

  1. 1

    Pick 2–3 people on the Production team at Pen Manufacturing

    Engineers who joined in the last year or two reply the most. Use the team search on this page to find them.

  2. 2

    Send a short, curious note

    One real question about their work. No favors yet. Each person gets a different note, written for this role.

  3. 3

    Turn a reply into a short call

    Questions worth asking about this team:

    • What does a normal week look like on your team?
    • How did you land the job? What stood out in your interviews?
  4. 4

    Apply with someone vouching for you

    If the call went well, ask whether they’d pass your résumé to the hiring manager. Send your résumé link, apply that day, and let them know.

  5. 5

    Bring proof to the interview

    One page of before-and-after numbers from projects you led: scrap, OEE, cycle time, cost. Plant managers hire on results.

Full description from Pen ManufacturingAs posted on their careers site.Show

You Will Work With Experienced Quality Leadership To

  • ✓Maintain strong AS9100 operating discipline.
  • ✓Reduce scrap and rework.
  • ✓Improve first-pass yield.
  • ✓Address recurring quality problems.
  • ✓Drive root-cause analysis and corrective action.
  • ✓Maintain traceability and documentation requirements.
  • ✓Ensure Quality and Production work together without compromising standards.
  • ✓Improve the cost of quality.

Quality is not something that gets inspected into a part at the end.

It needs to be built into how the plant operates.

Facilities & Maintenance

You will oversee Facilities and Maintenance and ensure the physical plant supports reliable production.

Show full description ↓
  • •Labor efficiency.
  • •Coordination across departments.
  • •Improve first-pass yield.

The Opportunity

Pen Manufacturing , part of Metal Solutions Holdings ("MSH") , is seeking an experienced Plant Manager/Director of Operations - Metal Fabrication to lead the operational organization at our Anaheim facility. MetalSolutionsHoldings.com

About Pen Manufacturing

Pen is an AS9100-certified, technology-enabled metal manufacturing operation serving demanding customers across industrial, infrastructure, data center, aerospace & defense, space, and OEM markets.

The Plant Manager is the senior operational leader at the site and will have direct responsibility for:

  • •Production
  • •Supply Chain / Purchasing
  • •Quality Control
  • •Engineering
  • •Facilities & Maintenance

You will lead experienced managers across these functions and be accountable for getting the entire operational organization working together.

This is not simply a Production Manager position.

The Site Leader owns the overall P&L, customers, pricing, and commercial strategy. The Plant Manager owns operational execution — ensuring we engineer, purchase, manufacture, inspect, and deliver jobs for the labor, material, time, quality, and margin we expected.

What You Will Own

Gross Margin Execution & Job Reconciliation

This is a critical part of the role.

Every job has an estimate. We need to know whether we actually performed against it — and why.

You Will

  • •Own the weekly job-reconciliation process.
  • •Review estimated vs. actual labor hours by job.
  • •Review estimated vs. actual material usage and costs.
  • •Identify jobs that beat or missed expected gross margin.
  • •Determine the root cause of margin misses.
  • •Identify recurring problems across Engineering, Purchasing, Production, Quality, or scheduling.
  • •Assign and drive corrective actions with the appropriate functional managers.
  • •Ensure lessons from completed jobs flow back into Engineering, Estimating, Purchasing, Production, and future bids.
  • •Provide the Site Leader with clear visibility into where gross margin is being won or lost.

We do not want to discover margin problems at the end of the month.

We want someone who can identify problems at the job level while there is still time to fix them.

Production

You will lead the Production organization and hold its leadership accountable for:

  • •Production scheduling and schedule attainment.
  • •Labor allocation.
  • •Machine and work-center utilization.
  • •Capacity planning.
  • •Throughput.
  • •Work-in-process management.
  • •Bottleneck identification and resolution.
  • •Overtime management.
  • •Labor efficiency.
  • •Coordination across departments.
  • •On-time delivery.

You Should Always Know

What is late? What is at risk? Where is the bottleneck? Why? And what are we doing about it?

Supply Chain & Purchasing

You will oversee Supply Chain and ensure material supports both customer delivery and job profitability.

You Will Be Accountable For

  • •Material availability.
  • •Purchasing performance.
  • •Supplier performance.
  • •Material cost and purchase-price variance.
  • •Lead times.
  • •Inventory discipline.
  • •Expediting when necessary.
  • •Developing stronger suppliers and alternatives.
  • •Ensuring purchasing decisions support quoted job economics.

Supply Chain should not operate independently from Production, Engineering, or job profitability.

Engineering

Engineering will report into the Plant Manager.

You will not be expected to personally engineer jobs. You will lead experienced technical managers and ensure Engineering supports successful execution.

You Will Be Accountable For

  • •Engineering throughput and responsiveness.
  • •Effective handoff from estimating/sales into production.
  • •Manufacturability.
  • •Accurate and timely drawings, routings, BOMs, and production information.
  • •Engineering-change discipline.
  • •Resolving technical bottlenecks affecting production.
  • •Ensuring lessons from completed jobs improve future execution.

The Plant Manager needs enough technical and manufacturing judgment to challenge the organization, ask the right questions, and hold senior technical leaders accountable.

Quality Control

Pen operates in an AS9100-certified environment , and Quality will report to the Plant Manager.

Include

  • •Equipment uptime.
  • •Preventive maintenance.
  • •Facility reliability.
  • •Equipment repairs.
  • •Safety and housekeeping.
  • •Capital-equipment needs.
  • •Facility improvements.
  • •Identifying equipment or facility bottlenecks that constrain capacity or profitability.

Labor Efficiency

Labor is one of the most important drivers of profitability.

You Will

  • •Track estimated vs. actual labor hours.
  • •Monitor utilization and efficiency.
  • •Improve staffing and work-center allocation.
  • •Reduce unnecessary overtime.
  • •Identify training and performance gaps.
  • •Hold managers and supervisors accountable for labor performance.
  • •Improve setup times and production flow.
  • •Ensure labor data is entered accurately and on time.

The goal is not simply keeping people busy.

The goal is producing quality work efficiently and profitably.

Data & Technology

Pen is a technology-enabled manufacturing business .

We expect the Plant Manager to manage using data — not intuition alone.

You will use ERP, job-costing, scheduling,

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