Nightshift Production Supervisor

Alicat^® is looking for a Nightshift Production Supervisor to lead our assembly team in building the precision instruments that power rocket launches, fuel cells, and life-saving medical devices. As the leader on the floor during the night shift, you’ll have the autonomy to make real-time decisions, shape team culture, and drive production forward. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys developing people and creating structure where it’s needed.

At Alicat, we value curiosity over credentials, impact over titles, and creativity over convention. If you’re ready to lead with purpose, grow a team, and contribute to technologies that advance science and industry, we’d love to meet you.

Your Core Mission: Develop your team, drive daily throughput, and keep production standards high — so customers get what they depend on, on time.

The Goal: Drive the night shift to meet daily shipment targets by actively managing the physical movement of product from kitting through to final inspection.

Specific Tasks:

• Shift Launch & Communicate Expectations: Assign urgent work orders, communicate targets and ensuring technicians are productive within 10 minutes of shift start.
• Monitoring WIP: Perform a physical floor walkthrough every hour to identify backlogs and rebalance the floor in real-time before they impact shipments.
• Active Labor Rebalancing: Reassign cross-trained technicians between workstations on the fly to address unplanned staffing gaps or to accelerate high-priority orders nearing their shipping deadline.
• Live Productivity Coaching: Monitor individual OLE (Overall Labor Effectiveness) against the 60% team target. If a process exceeds its expected time by >25%, intervene immediately to provide technical signposting, clarify instructions, or remove hurdles.
• Cross-Departmental Problem Solving: Serve as the primary point of contact for technical “blockers” (e.g., damaged parts, incorrect documents). Coordinate directly with Machine Shop and Electronics leads to secure immediate resolutions to minimize delay to orders.

The Goal: Build a versatile, high-performing assembly team by closing skill gaps and using data-driven coaching to ensure every technician knows exactly how to succeed.

Specific Tasks:

• Metric-Based 1:1s for Growth: Conduct formal weekly 1:1 sessions focused on “Operational Impact” metrics-specifically OLE (Overall Labor Effectiveness), quality yield (defects vs. completions), and attendance. Use this data to transition the conversation from past performance to future professional growth.
• Skills Matrix & Cross-Training Priority: Actively manage the Skills Matrix to identify “single-point-of-failure” processes. Prioritize team versatility by scheduling and overseeing at least 2 hours of dedicated cross-training per technician weekly to de-risk operations and expand individual skill sets.
• Professional Development Tracking: In every 1:1, audit the progress of each technician’s training “commitment”. Act as the gatekeeper for career advancement by verifying their tactical understanding of performance metrics and assembly standards before transitioning them from “Learner” to “Proficient”.
• Behavioral Accountability: Provide immediate, clear feedback when behavioral standards (e.g., punctuality, safety protocols, or 5S adherence) are not met. Link these behaviors directly to the team’s ability to succeed as a team.

The Goal: Maintain Alicat’s reputation for precision by enforcing standardized assembly processes and driving incremental efficiency through lean methodologies.

Specific Tasks:

• Quality Metric Management: Monitor individual defect rates daily. If an operator exceeds the <5% error threshold, conduct a root-cause check to determine if the issue is a training gap, a documentation error, or a tooling malfunction, and implement a corrective action immediately.
• 5S & Ergonomic Sustainment: Conduct a nightly “End of Shift” walkthrough to audit workstation organization. Ensure tools are returned to designated shadows and workspaces are cleared of waste to maintain a safe and efficient environment for the incoming day shift.
• Lean Initiative Leadership (Kaizen): Identify and execute at least one “small-scale improvement” per month. This includes re-organizing high-traffic material bins, suggesting workstation ergonomic adjustments, or identifying steps in a process that can be eliminated to reduce waste.

• Shadow the Flow: Spend 20+ hours “on the tools” with Lead Technicians to observe the physical movement of product from kitting to shipping. Identify the top recurring interruption (the “bottleneck of the week”) to discuss with the Production Manager.
• Team Discovery: Conduct “Discovery Meetings” with all direct reports. Document their tenure, current skills, primary frustrations, and what they enjoy most about their work to build a baseline for future coaching.
• Identify Critical Gaps: Audit the Training Matrix to identify “Single Points of Failure”—any process that only one person on the night shift knows how to do.
• Metric Literacy: Establish a baseline understanding of the shift’s current performance against targets: 10-day lead time, <5% error rate, and 60% OLE.

• Facilitate Training Growth: Instead of doing all the training yourself, implement a training schedule that successfully cross-trains at least two operators on a critical “gap” skill, increasing shift flexibility.
• Stabilize Metrics: Show measurable progress toward hitting daily output targets consistently, maintaining team OLE at or above the 60% threshold.
• Operational Autonomy: Manage standard day-to-day personnel and process issues (e.g., attendance, material shortages, or station rebalancing) independently, escalating only strategic or high-risk quality concerns.
• The “Quick Win”: Lead one initiative to improve the workspace—either by updating an outdated SOP for clarity or re-organizing a workstation layout (5S) to reduce waste.

• 5+ years of experience in a manufacturing or production environment; prior supervisory or team lead experience preferred.
• Strong communicator who can give clear direction, deliver constructive feedback, and keep the team aligned.
• Self-driven and resourceful — you don’t wait to be told what needs fixing, you go find it and solve it.
• Naturally curious — you ask “why” before accepting “that’s how we’ve always done it”.
• Comfortable reading and working with production data, metrics, and schedules to make informed decisions.
• Familiarity with lean manufacturing concepts (Kaizen, 5S, etc.) is a plus but not required — we’ll teach the right person.