Production Supervisor - Press and Weld Cells

Overview

The Production Supervisor is responsible for leading daily manufacturing operations within robotic and manual welding cells and the press shop. This position ensures that production targets are achieved safely, with the required quality, efficiency, labor utilization, and delivery performance. The supervisor provides direct shop-floor leadership, assigns employees, monitors hourly performance, addresses production interruptions, enforces standardized work, and coordinates support from Maintenance, Quality, Engineering, Tooling, Materials, and Safety.

The primary focus of this role is to maintain a safe workplace, prevent defects, reduce downtime and scrap, improve productivity, and ensure customer requirements are consistently achieved.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Safety

• Maintain a strong safety presence on the production floor.
• Ensure all employees follow plant safety rules, personal protective equipment requirements, lockout/tagout procedures, machine-guarding requirements, and safe work practices.
• Conduct daily pre-shift safety meetings and communicate applicable safety alerts.
• Complete safety observations, layered process audits, housekeeping inspections, and corrective-action follow-up.
• Stop production immediately when unsafe conditions or behaviors are identified.
• Ensure operators are properly trained and authorized before operating welding equipment, presses, cranes, forklifts, robots, or other machinery.
• Investigate incidents, near misses, first-aid cases, and unsafe conditions using structured root-cause analysis.
• Maintain clean and organized work areas through 5S standards.
• Ensure emergency stops, light curtains, guards, interlocks, and other safety devices are functional and never bypassed.
• Coordinate with EHS and Maintenance to close safety concerns promptly.

Quality

• Ensure all products are manufactured according to customer specifications, work instructions, control plans, quality alerts, and standardized work.
• Verify that first-piece, last-piece, changeover, and in-process inspections are completed and documented.
• Monitor weld quality, dimensional requirements, press-part conditions, visual standards, and critical product characteristics.
• Ensure operators properly use gauges, fixtures, boundary samples, master samples, and error-proofing devices.
• Stop production and contain suspect material when defects or process abnormalities are identified.
• Coordinate containment, sorting, rework, and corrective actions with the Quality team.
• Support root-cause analysis using 5 Why, Fishbone, 8D, Pareto, and other problem-solving methods.
• Reduce scrap, rework, weld defects, missing components, dimensional issues, and customer complaints.
• Ensure nonconforming material is properly identified, segregated, documented, and controlled.
• Participate in layered process audits, process verification audits, PFMEA reviews, control-plan reviews, and customer-specific quality activities.
• Reinforce a quality-at-the-source culture and employee accountability for defect prevention.

Productivity and Delivery

• Achieve hourly and daily production targets according to the approved production schedule.
• Monitor hourly production, cycle time, downtime, scrap, labor efficiency, changeover performance, and schedule attainment.
• Review production results against established rates and immediately address performance gaps.
• Assign employees according to production requirements, skills, qualifications, and staffing levels.
• Ensure production boards and KPI tracking systems are updated accurately and on time.
• Identify bottlenecks and coordinate recovery plans with Maintenance, Engineering, Quality, Tooling, and Materials.
• Minimize unplanned downtime through rapid escalation and structured response.
• Manage break coverage, absenteeism, overtime, job rotation, and manpower utilization.
• Support continuous-improvement activities focused on throughput, OEE, cycle-time reduction, labor efficiency, scrap reduction, and changeover improvement.
• Ensure materials, containers, racks, labels, components, and finished-product handling are available to support uninterrupted production.
• Maintain effective communication during shift handoffs and document unresolved issues.

Welding Cell Responsibilities

• Supervise robotic and manual MIG welding operations.
• Monitor weld quality, including porosity, burn-through, undercut, cold welds, missed welds, excessive spatter, wire-feed issues, and weld-location concerns.
• Ensure weld parameters, programs, fixtures, clamps, tips, nozzles, liners, wire, gas flow, and consumables are controlled.
• Confirm that operators complete required tip changes, nozzle cleaning, fixture cleaning, and basic autonomous-maintenance tasks.
• Ensure robotic programs and weld parameters are not changed without proper authorization.
• Escalate robot faults, fixture issues, clamp failures, sensor problems, and repeated weld defects.
• Coordinate with Welding Engineering, Controls, Maintenance, Tooling, and Quality to restore stable production.
• Verify that red-rabbit tests, destructive testing, weld verification, poke-yoke checks, and required quality checks are completed.
• Monitor tooling and fixture conditions to prevent dimensional variation, damaged components, and improper clamping.
• Ensure weld spatter, smoke extraction, fume-control systems, and housekeeping standards are properly managed.

Press-Shop Responsibilities

• Supervise press operations, including progressive, transfer, tandem, or manual press processes as applicable.
• Ensure presses, dies, feeders, straighteners, coils, scrap conveyors, sensors, guards, and material-handling equipment are operated safely.
• Verify die setup, first-off approval, material identification, coil changes, and production changeovers.
• Monitor press-part quality for splits, cracks, wrinkles, burrs, dents, dimensional variation, missing holes, improper forms, and surface defects.
• Coordinate die repairs, press maintenance, lubrication concerns, feeder problems, sensor faults, and material-quality issues.
• Ensure die-protection sensors and safety devices are operational and never bypassed.
• Monitor press speed, strokes per minute, downtime, scrap rates, die-change time, and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Ensure scrap is properly collected, weighed, identified, and removed from the production area.
• Support SMED and die-change improvement activities.
• Maintain clear communication with Tooling, Maintenance, Materials, Quality, and Production Control regarding press-shop conditions.

Leadership and Employee Management

• Provide clear daily direction and hold employees accountable for safety, quality, productivity, attendance, and workplace conduct.
• Conduct pre-shift meetings and communicate production priorities, quality concerns, safety issues, and staffing assignments.
• Train, coach, and develop team leaders, operators, press operators, welders, and material handlers.
• Maintain employee training records and skills matrices.
• Address performance, attendance, behavior, and policy issues consistently and in coordination with Human Resources.
• Promote teamwork, discipline, urgency, and accountability.
• Recognize strong performance and provide timely corrective feedback when standards are not met.
• Support employee involvement, continuous improvement, and problem-solving activities.
• Ensure company policies, work rules, and collective bargaining requirements are followed where applicable.

Administrative Responsibilities

• Complete production reports, downtime records, scrap reports, labor tracking, attendance records, quality documentation, and shift summaries.
• Track and report key operational metrics.
• Participate in daily production meetings, shift handoffs, customer reviews, and improvement meetings.
• Maintain accurate records of production interruptions, corrective actions, and escalation activities.
• Support audits related to IATF 16949, ISO standards, customer-specific requirements, safety, and internal operating systems.
• Ensure required documentation is complete, current, accurate, and available at the point of use.

Qualifications

Key Performance Indicators

• Safety incidents and near-miss closure
• Safety audit compliance
• First-time quality and first-pass yield
• Scrap and rework
• Customer complaints and internal defects
• Production attainment
• Schedule attainment
• Units per labor hour
• Labor efficiency
• Overall equipment effectiveness
• Downtime and mean time to repair
• Cycle-time performance
• Changeover time
• Weld-quality performance
• Press-part quality
• Attendance and overtime
• Training completion
• 5S and housekeeping performance
• Corrective-action closure

Required Education & Experience

Education and Experience

• High school diploma or equivalent required.
• Associate or bachelor’s degree in Manufacturing, Engineering, Operations, Business, or a related field preferred.
• Minimum of three to five years of manufacturing experience.
• Minimum of two years of supervisory or team-leadership experience in an automotive or high-volume manufacturing environment.
• Experience supervising welding cells, press-shop operations, metal fabrication, stamping, or assembly operations.
• Working knowledge of robotic and manual MIG welding processes.
• Understanding of press operations, tooling, dies, material flow, and production changeovers.
• Knowledge of safety requirements, lockout/tagout, machine guarding, PPE, and incident investigation.
• Understanding of quality systems, standardized work, control plans, PFMEA, layered process audits, and defect containment.
• Ability to read production reports, quality data, work instructions, and basic engineering drawings.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, organizational, and leadership skills.
• Ability to work under pressure and respond effectively to production interruptions.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Outlook, production-reporting systems, and ERP/MRP systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Automotive Tier 1 manufacturing experience.
• Experience with FANUC, Yaskawa Motoman, ABB, KUKA, or similar robotic welding systems.
• Experience with progressive, transfer, or tandem presses.
• Knowledge of IATF 16949 and customer-specific requirements.
• Experience with Lean Manufacturing, 5S, Kaizen, SMED, OEE, and continuous improvement.
• Experience with 8D, 5 Why, Fishbone, Pareto analysis, and structured corrective action.
• Bilingual English and Spanish skills are beneficial.

Supervisory Responsibility

This position has supervisory responsibilities and direct reports.

Work Environment

This position operates primarily in an industrial manufacturing environment. The Production Supervisor must be available to respond to production, quality, maintenance, staffing, and safety issues throughout the assigned shift.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands and fingers to handle, feel, or operate objects, tools or controls, and reach with hands and arms.  The employee is frequently required to walk, stand, kneel, crouch, talk and hear.  The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 40 pounds.  Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, and depth perception.