Leadership Training for Manufacturing Managers

Module Three: Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)

This module introduces Sales and Operations Planning as a core business process for aligning demand, capacity, and resources. Participants learn the purpose and objectives of S&OP, how to develop and balance plans, how to manage consensus meetings, and how to integrate traditional and nontraditional labor sources. The module emphasizes the development of a realistic, data-driven strategy to improve service levels, control costs, and support long-term growth.

Section Two: Leadership

Module One: Getting Started

This module sets the foundation for leadership success in manufacturing. Participants gain a clear understanding of the leadership journey, personal accountability, and the role leaders play in shaping culture, performance, and continuous improvement.

Module Two: The Evolution of Leadership

This module examines the nature of leadership in today’s manufacturing environment. Participants examine leadership principles, servant leadership, and the Kouzes and Posner leadership model, including modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. The module includes a personal leadership inventory and action-planning tools for immediate application.

Module Three: Situational Leadership

This module teaches leaders to adapt their leadership style to their team’s needs. Participants learn the four situational leadership approaches—telling, selling, participating, and delegating—and how to apply each style effectively to improve performance, accountability, and engagement.

Module Four: Lead Through Team Building

This module focuses on building high-performance manufacturing teams. Participants learn the purpose of teams, characteristics of top-performing teams, accountability, span of control, SOP development, performance indicators, KPIs, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). The module equips leaders with practical tools for structuring, managing, and optimizing team performance.

Module Five: Lead by Example

This module develops leaders who influence through action. Participants learn how to be inspirational role models, apply persuasion and influence techniques, build credibility through consistency, and create a learning-driven culture. The module also covers how to address toxic behavior and build a strong business case for difficult personnel decisions.

Module Six: Lead by Communicating with Your Team

This module strengthens leadership communication skills. Participants learn to communicate vision clearly, align teams around shared goals, encourage open dialogue, establish a culture of feedback, and resolve conflict constructively. The module emphasizes concise, effective communication that drives results.

Module Seven: Lead by Establishing Trust, Respect, and Encouraging Growth

This module focuses on building trust-based leadership. Participants learn to cultivate mutual respect, encourage growth, prepare employees for promotion, and foster a culture in which learning from mistakes drives innovation and continuous improvement.

Module Eight: Lead by Motivating Your Team

This module explores proven motivation theories and practical tools for improving morale, engagement, and retention. Participants learn how to apply Herzberg’s theory, expectancy theory, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, personality-based motivation strategies, incentive programs, and morale improvement plans tailored to manufacturing teams.

Module Nine: Lead by Setting SMART Goals

This module teaches leaders how to set and manage performance goals using the SMART framework and the GROW model. Participants learn how to establish norms, standards, performance objectives, strategic plans, and job analysis processes that drive accountability, engagement, and measurable improvement.

Module Ten: Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

This module introduces leaders to Employee Assistance Programs and employee savings programs. Participants learn to implement EAPs, leverage organizational purchasing power, and provide meaningful support resources that improve employee well-being and retention.

Section Three: Creating Operational Excellence

Module One: Building an Intrinsically Motivated Company

This module teaches leaders how to build a culture driven by intrinsic motivation. Participants learn how to hire, promote, and develop employees who take ownership of performance, innovation, and continuous improvement, thereby creating a sustainable competitive advantage.

Module Two: Production Planning, Scheduling, and Control

This module delivers practical tools for controlling production performance. Participants learn production roles, planning and scheduling best practices, Production Activity Control (PAC), job planning, kitting, staging, feedback systems, and planner workflows that enable organizations to transition from reactive to proactive operations.

Module Three: Inventory Management

This module provides a structured approach to managing inventory as a strategic asset. Participants learn inventory fundamentals, carrying costs, stockout costs, EOQ, reorder points, safety stock, inventory turnover, and metrics that improve service while reducing working capital.

Module Four: Asset Tracking

This module introduces modern asset identification and tracking systems. Participants learn about SKUs, AIDC, barcodes, QR codes, RFID, voice recognition, barcode readers, technical standards, and system selection strategies that improve accuracy, visibility, and traceability.

Module Five: Just-In-Time and Lean Production

This module teaches Lean and JIT production principles for eliminating waste and improving flow. Participants learn Kanban, Kaizen, Heijunka, Andon, SMED, TQM, and TPM methodologies that drive productivity, quality, and reliability throughout manufacturing operations.

Module Six: Theory of Constraints

This module focuses on identifying and eliminating operational bottlenecks. Participants learn the TOC five-step process, root-cause analysis methods, and continuous improvement tools to increase throughput, reduce lead time, and improve system performance.

Conclusion: Challenging the Process

This concluding module equips leaders with the mindset and tools needed to drive change. Participants learn why change is difficult; how commitment and consistency influence behavior; how to think creatively; how to build business cases; how to lobby for improvement; how to apply reverse mentoring; and how to convince leadership to embrace innovation and transformation successfully.

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