Aerospace Production-Core Cutover Leader

The mandate

A pilot plant reversed its production-core cutover after work orders lost alignment with engineering effectivity, serialised material could not be traced confidently and delivery dates diverged between planning and shop-floor execution. The programme director departed during the recovery review. The company now has a twenty-month window to stabilise the template, prove it in contrasting production environments and prevent each plant from hardening emergency local workarounds into the next global design.

The interim leader will reconnect engineering configuration, material planning, procurement, quality inspection, non-conformance, labour capture, inventory, costing and delivery promise around traceable serialised work. Recovery must establish authoritative objects, migration evidence, plant-readiness gates, controlled offline procedures and a release sequence shaped by manufacturing risk rather than software-module completion. Integrator claims will be evaluated against physical-material and aircraft-customer outcomes.

Permanent leadership must be appointed by month thirteen and direct the final plant wave before the assignment closes. The successor will chair a genealogy exception, a production-freeze decision and a customer-delivery escalation under observation. Handover includes the global template rationale, plant deviations, data quality, configuration controls, vendor commitments, value baseline and remaining retirement obligations, with no private reconciliation knowledge retained by the interim team.

The executive may halt migrations, re-sequence sites, control template deviations, redirect approved recovery capacity, require physical-to-system reconciliation and accept readiness below reserved safety and financial thresholds. The seat cannot release product, approve an airworthiness determination, waive quality records, amend customer deliveries, certify financial controls, sign vendor changes or accept safety risk. Those duties stay with formally designated officers.

The remit excludes becoming plant manager, head of quality, design authority or permanent ERP owner. Completion requires stable production, traceable material genealogy, reconciled inventory and cost, retiring local bridges and a successor able to govern the remaining network. Because the term cannot extend, the scope must favour finished plant outcomes and explicit residual decisions over an ambitious global deployment count.

Why this seat is open

The previous director accepted system and migrated-record counts while plant teams could not reconcile a serialised component to its effective design and inspection state. Reversal of the pilot destroyed confidence and exposed customer delivery risk. The board needs a temporary executive with authority across technology and manufacturing who can rebuild evidence, stop premature migration and develop permanent leadership before the fixed recovery window closes.

What you will own

• Reconstruct the failed cutover across engineering effectivity, bills, routings, material, work orders, inspection, genealogy, cost and delivery.
• Establish authoritative production objects and reconciliation rules that connect physical inventory and serial state to system records.
• Govern global-template variation using regulatory need, plant process, product mix, future support cost and explicit expiry evidence.
• Define plant gates covering master data, workforce competence, offline operation, supplier readiness, backlog, rollback and customer protection.
• Direct rehearsals that follow representative serialised components from engineering release through manufacture, inspection, shipment and financial posting.
• Challenge integrator status through observed shop-floor execution, exception closure and repeatable plant-owned evidence rather than configuration completion.
• Induct the successor through the final plant wave and transfer template decisions, residual deviations, economics and vendor obligations.

Candidate qualifications

• Has recovered a failed ERP and manufacturing-execution cutover in aerospace or another tightly controlled serial-production environment.
• Understands engineering effectivity, material genealogy, quality records, non-conformance, work execution, inventory and product costing end to end.
• Has reconciled physical and system state at serial or lot level before authorising production migration and legacy retirement.
• Can challenge a major integrator while preserving plant ownership of readiness, process decisions and sustainable operating evidence.
• Has governed a global template without suppressing justified plant variation or allowing emergency local design to become permanent.
• Demonstrates transfer to a permanent leader tested through live plant, customer and controlled-product decisions before departure.

Non-negotiables

• Will be based onsite in Montreal and complete the scheduled production-network cutover residencies.
• Must disclose relationships with aerospace manufacturers, ERP publishers, integrators, suppliers and quality-assurance organisations.
• Brings physical serial-genealogy and production cutover evidence; corporate ERP finance transformation alone is insufficient.
• Will not approve a plant migration from dashboard status without observed reconciliation of material, work and quality records.

1. 49 words maximum. Which serial-genealogy break would make you reverse an aerospace plant cutover immediately?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you distinguish justified plant variation from an avoidable global-template exception?
3. 49 words maximum. What production decision must the permanent successor chair before your fixed term ends?