Contract | 6–12 months | Day rate + expenses | Travel M–F, CONUS The mandate A defined window, a defined number. You are brought in to find waste on the factory floor and convert it into throughput and margin inside six to twelve months, then transfer the capability to the site team before you leave. This is a hands-on floor role. You will spend your days at the process, not in a conference room building decks. What you'll own • Value stream mapping across the primary product families • Constraint identification and throughput improvement at the bottleneck • Changeover reduction, cycle time improvement, and line balancing • Scrap, rework, and first-pass-yield improvement through structured root cause work • Standard work, visual management, and tiered daily accountability • Kaizen event planning and facilitation, with financial validation on each • Capability transfer: training and certifying site personnel so the gains hold post-engagement Deliverables A quantified improvement pipeline with financial validation, a functioning daily management system, and a site team capable of running the next wave without you. What you bring • Lean Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt, or equivalent demonstrated depth • 10+ years driving improvement in discrete or process manufacturing environments • A record of financially validated results — improvements the controller agreed to book • Ability to teach and coach at every level, from operator to plant manager • Credibility on the floor. Operators decide within a day whether they are going to work with you. • Willingness to be on site five days a week Strong plus: TPM and predictive maintenance deployment; PE-backed environments; prior work inside a formal business system such as the VDS Business System®; training and facilitation experience. 2. FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP & RESTRUCTURING