Operational Excellence Director

For our client Cartamundi, a world leader in “play” solutions, we are looking for an Operational Excellence Director for their rapidly growing site in Turnhout. This new strategic role is positioned at the Site Leadership Team (SLT) level and reports directly to the VP Collectibles & Trading Card Games Europe.

The Turnhout site specializes in the successful niche of Collectibles & Trading Card Games and is experiencing dynamic growth: continuous investments are being made in new machinery, technologies, and processes to elevate production capacity and quality. As Operational Excellence Director, you will play a key role in driving this growth and transformation.

Your Mission:

You are the driving force behind the cultural transformation toward structured, integrated Operational Excellence. You will define and implement a site-wide strategy for continuous improvement. Your scope is cross-functional and spans Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, HR, and Finance.

What will you do?

• Develop a long-term Operational Excellence strategy aligned with global guidelines and business objectives.
• Identify improvement opportunities and define KPIs to monitor performance and progress.
• Create and implement a roadmap for basic continuous improvement (CI) tools at the frontline level, including zoning/5S, initial cleaning, team boards, daily direction setting, and equipment maintenance, with strong engagement from management.
• Optimize end-to-end processes to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance quality, collaborating closely with operational leaders and cross-functional teams.
• Develop and track a pipeline of improvement initiatives, measuring financial savings against targets in partnership with the Finance Director.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement across all departments and guide teams through change to ensure sustainable adoption.
• Support the hierarchical line, starting with team leaders, to successfully manage change initiatives.
• Collaborate with senior management, department heads, and external partners to implement improvement initiatives and report progress to the executive team.
• Use data analysis to identify trends, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement, and implement dashboards and reporting tools for performance monitoring.
• Build, coach, and lead an Operational Excellence team, providing training and development in Lean, Six Sigma, and other improvement methodologies.
• Strengthen organizational capability through data-driven process standards, dashboards, digital tools, and targeted training initiatives.

Who are you?

• Cartamundi is looking for a senior leader who combines strong operational credibility with the ability to drive cultural change.
• Master’s degree in engineering or a business-related field.
• Extensive experience in a manufacturing environment, including significant leadership responsibility.
• Broad operational background: beyond pure CI/OpEx, with experience in operational management and preferably exposure to areas such as Supply Chain and/or Quality.
• Proven experience with mature OpEx systems (e.g. TPM, IWS, WCM, Lean) and a track record of implementing them in a transformational or greenfield context.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is a strong asset.
• Strategic and conceptual thinker with a hands-on, pragmatic and results-driven mindset.
• Strong change leader with excellent stakeholder management skills and the ability to build trust at all levels.
• Analytical, resilient and comfortable in a fast-growing, high-demand environment.
• Ambition and potential to grow within the organization.
• Fluent in Dutch and English.

Why Cartamundi?

• Cartamundi is a family-owned company, headquartered in Belgium, and a worldleader in “play” solutions, providing people from all over the world the possibility to “Live Different, Play Different”.
• Cartamundi offers a unique opportunity to take on a key strategic role within a financially strong and rapidly growing organization.
• You will have the chance to build and shape the role and the OpEx roadmap from nearly scratch, with full support from Site Leadership Team and Group management.
• You will receive an attractive remuneration package and clear opportunities for personal and career development.

Interested?

• This vacancy is excusively managed by Bakker & Partners.
• Please apply via Linkedin or reach out to Katrien Hadermann, via Katrien.Hadermann@bakker.be or 0479|69.00.77.