Production Manager

About Us

Portland Bee Balm started 14 years ago in a garage in Southeast Portland with beeswax from the founder’s own backyard beehives. Since that hyperlocal beginning, we have grown into one of the largest independent all-natural lip balm companies on the West Coast. In the past decade and a half we have focused on our craft, our customers, and our local and global community—evaluating the impacts of our decisions, listening to feedback, and always being excited about better ways of doing business. We are proud to be a plastic-negative and certified cruelty-free company, meaning that we remove twice as much plastic from the environment as we produce and do not test any of our products on animals. We also produce the world’s only reusable all stainless-steel lip balm tube—designed and made in the USA to last a lifetime. We source our ingredients and packaging locally whenever possible and form lasting relationships with suppliers we trust. Each of us takes pride in creating one of the simplest, cleanest, and most accessible lip balms on the market with innovative packaging, unique displays, and the highest-quality ingredients we can find.

We have taken care to build our team and culture with the same holistic, long-term attitude that we’ve built our business. We are currently a team of 14 individuals, and we know that each and every one of us is essential to achieving the goals we share. We hold ourselves and our teammates to a high standard while always understanding that honest mistakes are a reality of life and excellent opportunities to learn. We consciously make space for team members’ priorities outside of work, believing that we all do our best work when our lives are balanced. We have an employee profit share program and open-books policy, meaning all company financial information is shared with every employee. We are a fast-growing company working together to make lip balms in the best way possible, and we are looking for someone who is excited to grow with us and be a part of what we’re building. We have big plans for the next year and beyond.

About You

You are a leader who enjoys maintaining an environment where the people under your leadership are excited to come into work each day. You believe lean manufacturing is the best way to think about production, and are motivated to learn more about its principles and approaches and extend its theory and practice into new, increasingly human-centered territory. You can teach the people under your leadership about its principles and approaches in a way that is fun and energizing, instilling in them a confidence in their own ability to understand the processes they engage with each day and an excitement to continuously improve them both independently and collaboratively with their teammates. You are quick to celebrate both individual and team wins, and when critical feedback is warranted you take care to frame it as positively and constructively as possible. You see those under your leadership as people first, and you care about knowing them, developing them, advocating for them, and maintaining an environment of mutual respect where they feel comfortable coming to you with concerns, ideas, questions, or requests for support.

You are a strong collaborator with other leaders in your organization, and can effectively describe the how, what, when, where, and why of every part of you and your teams’ day-to-day processes to them in the course of that collaboration. You understand the importance of collecting and maintaining data regarding those processes and can leverage that data to support your intuition with numbers-based analysis. You can build systems to accurately track the progress of various longer-term projects, and can use those systems to set goals for your team and communicate project status to other leaders. You are comfortable leading the hiring process for new members of your team, providing thoughtful performance reviews for the people under your leadership, and understand that sometimes there can be circumstances where the health of your team necessitates letting go of individuals not contributing positively to the collective whole. You feel just at home behind a computer analyzing your data as out on the production floor fixing a piece of equipment.

Summary/Objective:

The production manager leads the production team and has responsibility for all production-related processes and outcomes.

Primary Duties/Responsibilities:

Hire, evaluate, lead and inspire members of the production team

Set clear and measurable expectations for process outcomes and provide frequent feedback to members of your team regarding those outcomes

Train team members in lean manufacturing and facilitate the implementation of its principles and approaches across the production process by maintaining a culture of continuous improvement.

Track all production-related inventory items and set reorder trigger levels and maintain appropriate levels of finished goods and components (labels, tubes, ingredients, packaging, etc.)

Maintain a clean, organized, and safe workspace

Ensure all equipment is running properly

Work closely with leadership team to execute goals in a timely manner

Competencies:

Comfortable setting expectations and holding employees accountable in a positive and collaborative manner

Highly organized with strong attention to detail

Great written and verbal communication

Internally motivated

Can take a project from start to finish with minimal oversight

Has an understanding of business fundamentals and strategy

High mathematical literacy and ability to think numerically and probabilistically

Preferred Experience:

Management experience in a production environment

Familiarity with warehouse layout and organization

Familiarity with lean manufacturing

Experience with inventory tracking and supply chain management

CPG industry experience - preferably grocery - ideally body care

Familiarity with production equipment maintenance and repair

Work Environment:

This person works on-site in a professional office and warehouse environment in Portland, OR.

Job Type: Full-time M-F

Pay: $50,000.00 - $75,000/year depending on experience

Company-matching retirement plan

Health insurance benefits (coverage costs shared between company and employee)

Paid vacation

Paid holidays

Convenient inner NE office/warehouse location

Transportation benefit

How to Apply: Email. Please make the subject line of your email exactly "PBB job app". Attach a resumé, and in the body of the email explain why you are interested in this job specifically and tell us something not related to work that you're passionate about. No phone calls and no solicitation from recruiting companies, please.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $55,000.00 - $75,000.00 per year

Benefits:

401(k) 3% Match

Employee discount

Health insurance

Paid time off

Vision insurance

Schedule:

8 hour shift

Monday to Friday

Supplemental Pay:

Bonus opportunities

Quarterly bonus