Manufacturing Excellence Specialist

Company: Ball Corporation

Location:

Velim, CZ, 28101

Date: 18 Mar 2026

Job Category: Quality/ Continuous Improvement

Req ID: 48141

Further your career at Ball, a world leader in manufacturing sustainable aluminium packaging. Achieve extraordinary things when you join our team, and make a difference in your professional development, the community, and around the globe!

Ball is thrilled to receive Newsweek's 2023 Top 100 Global Most Loved Workplace award! As a sustainable product leader, we have over 16,000 global team members. From endlessly recyclable aluminum cans, and cups, to aerosol bottles, our goal is to contribute to a better community, society, and world.

Position overview:

The Manufacturing Excellence Specialist drives the plant’s continuous improvement strategy by deploying Lean principles, facilitating Hoshin Kanri, and leading performance‑enhancing initiatives across all functions. The role partners closely with Plant Management and shop‑floor teams to deliver sustainable operational excellence through structured problem solving, data‑driven decision making, and capability building. Acting as a change agent, the position builds lean maturity, strengthens collaboration, and embeds a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization.

Key responsibilities include:

Responsible for BME (Ball Manufacturing Excellence) self-assessment and improvement plan execution, embedding standards in Operations' way of working as per BOE (Ball Operational Excellence) program

Facilitate policy deployment process (Hoshin Kanri) to identify plant vision, mission, goals, objectives, and strategic initiatives for the next three years period together with Plant Management Team.
Develop project management & cost optimization governance in the plant, train and support project leaders to progress the projects by considering minimum project requirements.

Plan, facilitate, and execute continuous improvement activities by using Lean tools and techniques (VSM, 5S, SMED, PDCA, TPM, Problem Solving Techniques, ...) to sustain performance

Lead problem solving projects by training, coaching and facilitating teams to perform effective root cause analysis method
Examine data sets from Manufacturing Execution & Quality Systems in order to find trends and draw conclusions about the information they contain by using statistical tools.

Manage plant better practices program, liaise with company continuous improvement network for both benchmarking internal and external best practices and roll out in the plant
Prepare plant lean training program for cross-functional team members, train plant teams on Lean principles and tools, follow-up training program together with Regional CI Manager.

What are we looking for?

University degree in Science, Engineering, or Business
Minimum 3 years of relevant experience in a manufacturing environment with mature Lean practices (automotive, FMCG, etc.)
Solid knowledge of Lean principles with hands-on experience leading Lean improvement projects
Good understanding of statistical process control (SPC) and data analysis; Six Sigma Green or Black Belt is an advantage
Pragmatic and shop floor–oriented mindset
Ability to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines
Proactive and solution-oriented, with a drive to challenge current practices and improve performance
Influential change agent, able to build trust and align cross-functional teams
Excellent English and Czech language skills

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Ball Corporation is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We actively encourage applications from everybody, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, faith, ability, or orientation. When you join Ball you belong to a team of over 16,000 members worldwide. Our products range from infinitely recyclable aluminium cans, cups to aerosol bottles solutions that enable our customers to contribute to a better world.

Each of us has a deep commitment to diversity and inclusion which is the foundation of our culture of belonging. Everyone at Ball is making a difference by doing what we love. Because what we create may change, but what we will always make is a difference.

Please note the advertised job title might vary from the job title on the contract due to local job title structure and global HR systems.

No agencies please.