INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT & HR EXPERTS ACROSS THE PLASTICS, PACKAGING, SPECIALITY CHEMICALS, LIFE SCIENCES, BIOPOLYMER, FOOD ADDITIVES & INGREDIENTS, ENERGY AND RECYCLING SECTORS SINCE 1975.
Operations Manager
Based in Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Job ref: AZ /64935
Position Summary:
The Operations Manager is responsible for the full materials cycle across multiple geographically dispersed recycling facilities, covering both ferrous and non-ferrous streams at a combined daily throughput of approximately 4,000 MT. The role spans inbound receiving, processing, and outbound shipping, and carries accountability for how each stage is organized, performed, and continuously improved across all sites. The role is built on 3 operational disciplines of equal importance. Standardization, Efficiency, and Capacity Utilization. These 3 disciplines reinforce each other, and their combined effect on the business is a well-standardized, efficient, and highly utilized operation that delivers a measurably lower conversion cost per MT. That outcome is the expected consequence of the operation performing consistently at a high level across the 3 dimensions.
This is a field-based role that requires regular personal presence across all yards. The quality of operations at this scale is best assessed and improved through direct supervision and engagement, not through remote reporting. The right candidate brings the technical depth to assess what they see, the interpersonal credibility to influence how teams work, and the leadership maturity to drive sustained improvement across a complex, multi-site network.
Key Responsibilities:
Team Leadership:
The Operations Manager leads Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Processing Team Leaders and their teams of processing supervisors across all sites. Building capable, accountable, and improvement-oriented teams at every level is a defining and continuous dimension of the role.
• Provides direction, performance management, and professional development to Ferrous and Non-Ferrous Processing Team Leaders and their processing supervisors, with expectations that encompass operational standards, efficiency, utilization, and continuous improvement alongside throughput volume.
• Conducts regular capability assessments across both stream teams, identifies development priorities, and delivers structured plans that progressively build operational knowledge, process discipline, and improvement capability at every level.
• Builds a unified operational culture across both streams and all yards, common standards, a shared performance language, and the sustained expectation that operational excellence and continuous improvement are permanent features of the function.
• Operates effectively across a complex stakeholder environment, building productive working relationships with yard-level management, commercial, maintenance, materials control, and safety, and achieving operational outcomes through collaboration, influence, and shared accountability.
• Identifies and develops future leadership capability within the team, building a pipeline of supervisors capable of sustaining and improving standards independently.
Standardization:
A consistent standard operating model is the foundation on which efficiency and capacity utilization are built. Without clearly defined and enforced standards across all yards, each site tends toward its own working practices, and inconsistency at scale is where operational performance is lost before it can be measured or improved.
• Designs, documents, and implements a standard operating model governing how both ferrous and non-ferrous material is received, processed, and shipped across all yards, covering workflows, resource deployment, material sequencing, staging standards, and documentation requirements for each stage of the cycle.
• Establishes resource deployment standards by yard type and throughput level, appropriate workforce levels, equipment configuration, and shift structure for a given volume and material grade mix, and measures actual deployment against those standards.
• Reviews and updates the standard operating model as methods improve, equipment changes, or yard assessments indicate that the current standard is not producing the expected outcome.
• Identifies high-performing practices at individual yards and integrates them into the network-wide standard, ensuring that improvements at one site benefit all sites.
Efficiency:
Operational efficiency is the measure of how material moves through each stage of the cycle, from receiving at the gate to dispatch from the yard. Unnecessary handling steps, avoidable delays, poor staging decisions, and rework at any stage reduce the value of the work performed without contributing to output. The Operations Manager is responsible for identifying these losses systematically and eliminating them from the operational model across both streams and all yards.
• Oversees the full materials flow across all yards and both streams, from inbound receiving through processing to outbound shipping, with accountability for eliminating unnecessary handling steps, avoidable delays, and rework at every stage of the cycle.
• Establishes receiving performance standards across all yards, inbound scheduling, truck turnaround targets, material staging by grade and stream, and documentation compliance, and eliminates handling steps that add time or movement without contributing value.
• Works with commercial team to align inbound volumes and grade mix with each yard’s available processing capacity, preventing scheduling imbalances that create receiving or processing bottlenecks.
• Oversees daily processing output across both ferrous and non-ferrous streams, ensuring materials move smoothly from staging through processing to ready-to-sell areas in a clear, efficient sequence with minimal unnecessary handling or rework.
• Reviews processing workflows at each yard against the standard operating model, identifies deviations that introduce inefficiency, and works to redesign and re-standardize the correct sequence.
• Monitors processing yield by grade and equipment type, identifies deviations from expected levels, and coordinates with materials control and maintenance teams to investigate and resolve root causes.
• Oversees outbound shipping execution across both streams in all yards, ensuring shipments meet grade specification, weight accuracy, and loading standards, while maximizing load utilization.
Capacity Utilization:
Capacity Utilization measures how much of the available capacity, in equipment, machinery labors, and transportation, is being productively used. Closing the gap between what the assets can produce and what they actually produce through operational planning, scheduling discipline, and resource deployment management is a central accountability of this role.
• Measures and tracks actual output against nameplate capacity for key processing equipment across all yards, shredders, balers, shears, and mobile plant, and identifies the root cause of underutilization at each site, whether driven by scheduling gaps, material availability, shift coverage, or workflow bottlenecks.
• Designs shift scheduling models that maximize productive equipment hours across the full operating day for both streams, identifying yards where adjustments would materially improve utilization without requiring additional capital investment.
• Ensures resources are deployed in line with resource standards defined in the standard operating model, matching workforce levels to volume, grade mix, and processing requirements at each yard and shift, and rebalancing where deployment is misaligned with operational demand.
• Builds Team Leaders’ capability to manage resource deployment decisions at their yards independently, reducing reliance on central direction for day-to-day operational planning.
• Measures inbound and outbound transportation utilization across the network, tracking average load weight against maximum trucks capacity, and builds scheduling and grade consolidation practices that systematically close the gap.
• Works with the maintenance and equipment team to align planned maintenance with lower periods, minimizing the impact of scheduled downtime on productive capacity.
• Coordinates with commercial team to direct inbound purchasing toward yards with available processing capacity, preventing persistent overloading at high-demand sites while capacity sits idle elsewhere.
• Tracks utilization performance across equipment, labor, and transportation at network level and presents findings and improvement progress.
Commercial Interface:
The Operations Manager serves as the primary link between the operational network and the commercial team through 2 way effective communication that translates commercial demand into operational planning, while feeding operational performance and capacity data back into commercial decision-making.
• Serves as the primary operational interface with commercial team for order fulfilment planning, ensuring sales commitments across both ferrous and non-ferrous streams are matched to real processing capacity across all yards.
• Provides the commercial team with timely, accurate visibility of processing capacity by stream and yard, material availability by grade, and outbound shipment status, enabling well-informed purchasing and sales decisions.
• Identifies and communicates capacity constraints or scheduling conflicts that may affect the fulfilment of commercial commitments, raising these proactively with supporting data and proposed operational solutions.
• Coordinates material movements where consolidation across yards improves grade quality, shipment efficiency, or fulfilment reliability against outstanding orders.
• Participates in commercial planning discussions where processing capacity, material flow, or outbound logistics are relevant to volume, timing, or pricing decisions.
Safety Compliance:
The Operations Manager ensures that all operational activities across the receiving, processing, and shipping cycle comply fully with applicable safety standards, and that safe working requirements are embedded as an integral part of the standard operating model at every stage.
• Ensures full compliance with safety standards across all operational activities at all yards, for both material streams and all shifts.
• Collaborates with the SHEQ function on safety and housekeeping audits, observations, and corrective action programs, treating safety findings with the same operational urgency as performance or efficiency matters.
• Ensures that safe working requirements are incorporated into all standard operating procedures, as an integral part of how each operational task is defined and performed, not as a separate compliance layer.
Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Industrial Management, Operations Management, Supply Chain, or a related field.
• An equivalent combination of professional education and directly relevant industrial operations experience is to be considered.
Experience:
• + 10 years in senior operations management in a bulk material processing, heavy manufacturing, or commodity handling environment.
• Proven experience designing and implementing a standard operating model across a multi-site network, covering workflows, resource standards, and performance expectations consistently applied across geographically dispersed locations.
• A demonstrated track record of improving equipment and transportation utilization through operational and scheduling discipline, with measurable outcomes achieved without capital investment as the primary mechanism.
• Experience managing the full receive-process-ship cycle across multiple sites, with accountability for efficiency and utilization at each stage of the flow.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and develop operational teams across a multi-site network, building capability, enforcing standards, and driving improvement through direct engagement.
• Strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, able to build effective working relationships, influence operational outcomes across functions with different mandates, and navigate complex multi-stakeholder environments constructively.
• Experience serving as the primary operational interface with a commercial or trading function, translating commercial demand into operational planning and providing accurate, timely performance and capacity data to commercial teams.
• Analytical capability to interpret operational performance data at site and network level, identify underlying causes of performance gaps, and develop structured operational responses.
Technical Knowledge:
• Working knowledge of bulk material processing equipment to assess utilization, identify workflow inefficiencies, and engage productively with maintenance and equipment teams.
• Familiarity with shift scheduling design as a tool for improving equipment and labor utilization across a multi-site network.
• Understanding of OEE principles and their application in an industrial processing environment.
• Experience with ERP or operational management platforms for production scheduling, capacity planning, and performance monitoring.
• Practical application of Lean, Six Sigma, or equivalent continuous improvement methodologies across multiple sites, with demonstrated impact on efficiency or utilization outcomes.
• Experience with multi-modal outbound logistics, truck, and container, with demonstrated improvement in load utilization across a dispersed network.
• Familiarity with commodity trading dynamics and the relationship between operational decisions and their commercial implications.
Please understand that due to the expected high number of applications, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted directly
For reasons of better legibility, the simultaneous use of the language forms male, female and diverse (f/m/d) is avoided. All personal designations apply equally to all genders.
For EU roles, candidates must be eligible to work and live in the European Union. Proof of eligibility will be required with your application
To apply please contact Andy Zanin
Andy.zanin@listgrove.com
0044 (0) 1789 207070
CONNECT WITH ME ON LINKEDIN.
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