Value Stream Leader, Thermal Switch at Acron Aviation (Grand Rapids, MI)Value Stream Leader, Thermal Switch

About Acron Aviation (Avionics – Aftermarket): Acron Aviation designs, engineers, and manufactures certified avionics systems that support safety-critical flight operations across commercial and military aviation. Our avionics portfolio includes surveillance, recorders, displays, and related systems developed in regulated environments and deployed on aircraft worldwide. Through our Aftermarket organization, we support operators, OEMs, and maintenance providers by delivering technical expertise, product support, reliability improvements, and lifecycle sustainment solutions that maximize system availability and customer value. This work requires close collaboration across engineering, operations, quality, and customer support teams to ensure safe, reliable, and effective in-service performance

Position Summary At Acron our ambition is to relentlessly reimagine and reshape the value chains by which we deliver results to our customers, suppliers, and internal/external stakeholder communities in pursuit of innovations to creating safer skies. Acron employees strive to achieve world-class results through our values of always putting our customers first, displaying ownership of our results, moving fast and speaking candidly.  We currently seek a Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) Leader that thrives in complex cross-functional environments and is highly skilled in the management of balancing sales forecast uncertainty with capacity and inventory investments, Continuous Improvement, Lean Manufacturing and Team Building processes to achieve our vision.  This position is part of the Acron Avionics Business Unit and will be in Grand Rapids, MI.  This role requires the selected candidate to work on site during first and some second shift hours.

The ideal candidate is a high energy transformational leader with demonstrated and progressive experience creating, analyzing and optimizing well balanced sales, capacity and inventory plans using complex analytic tools and AI engines.  The SIOP Lead serves as the process and KPI leader for the SIOP operating system, ensuring disciplined cadence, transparent decision‑making, effective constraint management, and conversion of executive decisions into executable plans.  In this role the SIOP Lead is accountable for designing, deploying, and continuously improving the processes, standard work, tools and KPIs to ensure the organization operates with one integrated system framework.  The role will be responsible for directly leading Sales Operations and Master Scheduling representatives that effectively bridge the customer-facing Sales organizations into the Operational and Supply Chain environments.  Additionally, the role will be required to collaborate across a variety of cross functional organizations including Sales, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance and Engineering.  Through effective collaboration, influence, persuasion and negotiation skills the SIOP Lead is expected to deliver upon the sales growth objectives for the organization through constraint-based systems.  Acron’s requirement is for candidates who can lead and drive problem solving disciplines and operational excellence across the end-to-end value stream accountable for delivering on our SIOP objectives.

• ·         End-to-End SIOP Process Ownership
• Develop, maintain, continuously improve SIOP governance process and standard work
• Lead weekly SIOP cadences throughout Acron Avionics product lines and functions
• Provide governance and support to monthly revenue, EBITDA, Inventory and Cash estimates and variance analysis.
• Accountable for revenue and inventory results, constraint management and variation management
• ·         Demand Management & Signal Integrity
• Monthly demand (firm and forecast) aggregation, segmentation, analysis and updates
• Forecasting by family/platform and customer program using analytics
• Demand shaping assumptions & proposals within lead-time fences (changes, allocation, prioritization)
• Order book governance: expedite rules, priority codes, backlog hygiene
• Publish rolling 12 – 24 monthly demand forecast guidance
• ·         Master Scheduling, Supply Planning & Feasible Plan Development
• Create master schedule using level loading and smoothing
• Rough-cut supply planning by value stream / site / supplier
• Supply policy: make/buy, min order quantities, safety time/stock rules
• Constraint mapping: labor, test equipment, special processes, critical suppliers
• ·         Capacity Management & Rate Readiness
• Capacity modeling (labor, equipment, tooling, test cells, inspection)
• Rate readiness reviews (new rates, surges, contract awards)
• Capital planning inputs (equipment/test capacity, facility constraints)
• ·         Integrated Reconciliation (Demand–Supply–Finance)
• Revenue/margin/cash reconciliation
• Inventory projections (raw/WIP/FG), working capital targets
• Schedule risk and opportunity quantification and mitigation plans
• Scenario modeling: expedite vs overtime vs inventory builds vs alternate sourcing
• ·         Execution Bridge (SIOP → MPS/MRP → Scheduling)
• Frozen zone / slushy zone / liquid zone policy (stability rules)
• Master schedule governance and exception management
• Backlog recovery and expedite management
• Alignment to production control (WIP caps, takt/rate targets where applicable)
• ·         People & Culture Leadership
• Lead, coach, and develop cross-functional teams within the SIOP value stream
• Develop, maintain and continuously reinforce goals and objectives tailored to each role
• Responsible for cascading weekly communications from HQ and Avionics to all employees in the SIOP value stream
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement
• Reinforce safety-first and compliance-first behaviors
• Develop future SIOP value stream and operations leaders

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Operations, Supply Chain, Statistics, Engineering or related field
• 9+ years of progressive aerospace manufacturing or operations leadership[
• Direct experience leading or operating within a formal S&OE / SIOP process
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional value streams
• Proven lean manufacturing and continuous improvement leadership
• Strong financial acumen in P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statements
• Experience with developing and leading KPI trees used to measure the effectiveness and attainment of established sales plans and master schedules
• Working knowledge of ERP/MRP in SAP, or equivalent
• Strongly analytical skills (Excel/Power BI or similar), scenario planning, and constraint-based thinking. Demonstrated experience in what-if modeling and machine and labor capacity modeling.
• Strong understanding of aerospace certification, quality, and compliance requirements
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, persuasion and negotiation

• APICS/ASCM certifications (CPIM/CSCP) or equivalent planning credentials.
• Lean/Continuous Improvement training (Toyota Production System, kaizen, Tiered daily management)
• Customer-driven mindset: plans built around meeting customer needs while balancing established financial targets.