Job Description

Manufacturing Supervisor – Weekend Shift

Job Specification — Discrete Manufacturing, Machining and Assembly

Position Summary

The Weekend Production Supervisor is responsible for leading weekend manufacturing operations in a discrete manufacturing environment that includes CNC machining, secondary operations, assembly, inspection, and related material flow activities. This role provides hands-on leadership to ensure safe, disciplined, and efficient execution of the production schedule while maintaining quality, delivery, cost, and employee engagement objectives. The position requires strong presence, practical manufacturing knowledge, production-control discipline, and the ability to make timely decisions with limited off-shift support.

Reporting Relationship and Schedule

This position typically reports to the Manufacturing Manager or Operations Manager and works closely with Production Control, Materials, Quality, Maintenance, Manufacturing Engineering, and EHS. The role is assigned to a weekend schedule, commonly Friday through Sunday or a comparable weekend shift pattern, with flexibility required to support training, shift handoffs, overtime coverage, special builds, inventory activities, or urgent production needs.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead weekend machining and assembly teams to execute the approved production schedule safely, efficiently, and in accordance with standard work, quality requirements, and company policies.
• Maintain an active presence on the shop floor, coaching operators, resolving barriers, reinforcing expectations, and creating a culture of accountability, urgency, teamwork, and continuous improvement.
• Confirm labor readiness, machine and cell staffing, work order availability, material availability, tooling, fixtures, gauges, inspection requirements, and equipment readiness before and during each shift.
• Monitor production performance throughout the shift, including schedule attainment, output, earned hours, labor utilization, downtime, scrap, rework, first-pass yield, quality holds, and safety performance.
• Coordinate with Production Control, Materials, and weekday supervisors to ensure weekend work is properly prioritized, released, staged, transacted, and communicated before the start of the shift.
• Escalate constraints that could impact safety, quality, delivery, or cost, including material shortages, machine downtime, tooling issues, quality defects, absenteeism, staffing gaps, or unclear production priorities.
• Ensure accurate execution of ERP/MRP transactions, work order reporting, labor reporting, move transactions, scrap reporting, material returns, and production-completion activities.
• Support root cause analysis and corrective action for production misses, recurring defects, downtime events, schedule disruptions, and material-flow issues.
• Partner with Quality to ensure first-piece approvals, in-process checks, containment activity, nonconforming material handling, and final inspection requirements are followed.
• Partner with Maintenance and Manufacturing Engineering to resolve machine, tooling, fixture, process, and equipment issues that limit safe and repeatable production performance.
• Reinforce compliance with safety requirements, PPE, lockout/tagout expectations, machine guarding, ergonomic practices, housekeeping, 5S, and incident-reporting procedures.
• Prepare clear shift handoff notes for weekday leadership, including completed work, open issues, staffing concerns, quality concerns, downtime reasons, shortages, and recommended follow-up actions.

Production Control Requirements

The Weekend Production Supervisor must be able to operate with strong production-control discipline and understand how execution on the weekend affects the broader Master Production Schedule, customer commitments, inventory accuracy, and weekday manufacturing flow.

• Review the weekend production plan before shift start and validate that work orders, routings, quantities, priorities, materials, tooling, and inspection requirements are ready for execution.
• Understand production schedules, dispatch lists, capacity constraints, takt or rate requirements, changeover priorities, finite resources, and the connection between daily output and monthly build plans.
• Monitor schedule adherence during the shift and make practical recovery decisions when actual output differs from plan.
• Coordinate with Production Control or Planning to clarify priorities when competing work orders, shortages, engineering changes, hot jobs, or customer-impacting orders require tradeoff decisions.
• Ensure production transactions are accurate and timely so MRP, inventory balances, WIP status, shortage reporting, labor performance, and operational metrics remain reliable.
• Identify shortages, late starts, excess WIP, missing components, incorrect quantities, routing errors, and transaction gaps; escalate or correct issues using established procedures.
• Support kanban, point-of-use replenishment, staging, kitting, line-side inventory, and material-flow controls where applicable.
• Provide factual feedback to Planning, Materials, and Operations on schedule feasibility, capacity risks, labor constraints, machine constraints, and recurring causes of missed attainment.

Required Qualifications

• High school diploma or equivalent required; associate degree, technical certification, or bachelor’s degree in Operations Management, Manufacturing, Industrial Technology, Business, or a related field preferred.
• Minimum of three to five years of experience in a discrete manufacturing environment, preferably involving CNC machining, assembly, inspection, material flow, or related production operations.
• Prior experience leading hourly production employees, team leads, technicians, or operators in a multi-shift or off-shift manufacturing environment.
• Working knowledge of ERP/MRP systems, work orders, routings, bills of material, inventory transactions, production reporting, labor reporting, and schedule execution.
• Demonstrated ability to read and interpret work instructions, production schedules, drawings, routings, quality requirements, and manufacturing documentation.
• Strong understanding of safety expectations, quality discipline, standard work, 5S, lean manufacturing, visual management, and structured problem solving.
• Ability to work independently during weekend operations, make sound decisions, communicate clearly, and escalate appropriately when support resources are limited.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications, especially Outlook and Excel, and the ability to prepare clear shift reports and production updates.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supervising weekend, night-shift, compressed workweek, or high-overtime manufacturing operations.

• Experience in precision machining, firearms, durable goods, industrial products, or other regulated or quality-sensitive discrete manufacturing environments.
• Familiarity with production control tools such as dispatch reports, shortage reports, capacity plans, WIP reports, kanban cards, backflush transactions, and schedule-attainment dashboards.
• Lean, Six Sigma, supervisory leadership, OSHA, or APICS/CPIM-related training is a plus.
• Experience supporting new product introductions, engineering changes, cycle-time improvements, line balancing, productivity improvements, or overtime-reduction initiatives.

Core Competencies

• Safety Leadership: Leads by example, reinforces safe behaviors, and takes immediate action to address unsafe conditions or practices.
• Production Discipline: Drives schedule execution, standard work, transaction accuracy, and reliable shift performance.
• Floor Leadership: Maintains visibility with operators, communicates expectations clearly, and builds trust through consistency and follow-through.
• Problem Solving: Identifies root causes, uses facts and data, and coordinates corrective actions that prevent recurrence.
• Production-Control Mindset: Understands how materials, work orders, routings, labor, capacity, and transactions affect flow, schedule attainment, and MRP accuracy.
• Communication: Provides concise, factual updates to production, planning, quality, maintenance, engineering, and leadership stakeholders.
• Accountability: Sets clear expectations, addresses performance issues promptly, and promotes ownership at the operator and team-lead level.

Key Performance Indicators

• Weekend production schedule attainment
• Safety incidents, near misses, and corrective-action closure
• First-pass yield, scrap, rework, and quality hold performance
• Machine uptime, downtime response, and constraint recovery
• Labor utilization, earned hours, productivity, and overtime effectiveness
• Work order completion accuracy and ERP/MRP transaction discipline
• Material shortage escalation and WIP accuracy

• Shift handoff quality and timely communication of open issues
• Housekeeping, 5S, and standard-work adherence

Working Conditions and Physical Requirements

This role operates primarily in a manufacturing environment with regular exposure to production-floor conditions such as machinery, tooling, industrial noise, lubricants, coolants, metal chips, material handling equipment, assembly tools, and required PPE. The position requires frequent standing, walking, bending, reaching, and interaction with employees across machining, assembly, quality, maintenance, and materials areas. The supervisor must be able to respond to production issues with urgency and may be required to work additional hours as business needs dictate.