Leading a Global Production and Engineering Transformation

Global Advanced Manufacturing Group

Beaumont Bailey was retained by a leading global industrial technology organisation to support a critical transformation of its operations and engineering leadership.

Headquartered in Europe, this business operates across more than 20 countries, serving some of the world’s most regulated and innovation-driven sectors.

Facing increased competitive pressure, ongoing supply chain disruption, and a fast-evolving customer landscape, the group is now in the midst of a multi-year transformation.

The goal: to future-proof its operational and engineering capabilities and position the organisation for sustainable long-term success.

While the company’s end-market and product portfolio remain commercially sensitive, it is clear that structural complexity and legacy processes have hindered the pace of innovation and execution. Our work focuses on enabling this business to move faster, collaborate better, and perform stronger – through leadership.

Organisational Challenges and Transformation Imperatives

Our diagnostic phase identified four core challenges at the heart of the company’s structural and operational make up:

1. Legacy Organisational Challenges: The organisation operated under a legacy matrix structure – one that has become overly complex over time. This led to blurred lines of accountability, siloed regional leadership, and a slow decision-making culture.
2. Fragmented Engineering Function: The engineering function was fragmented across multiple geographies, with minimal coordination. As a result, technical expertise was diluted, duplication of effort widespread, and the group lacked a cohesive strategy to harness innovation at scale.
3. Decentralised Production Management: Production management was highly decentralised. Individual plants operate autonomously, often in isolation, with limited knowledge-sharing and no standardised approach to measuring or improving performance. Best practices were rarely scaled, and the absence of shared KPIs made benchmarking across sites challenging.
4. Functional Misalignment: There was a clear misalignment between core functions – including Engineering, Production, Quality, and R&D. Operating largely in silos, these teams suffer from weak interfaces, inconsistent incentives, and minimal coordination, which continues to impede cross-functional collaboration and operational excellence.

Strategic Response – Building a Global Operations Leadership Model

To address these challenges, Beaumont Bailey has partnered with the executive team to design and deliver a new global operations leadership framework. At the heart of this transformation is the creation of four newly defined leadership roles:

The Head of Production and Head of Engineering were successfully sourced from high-performing adjacent sectors, bringing transformation expertise and fresh perspective. Their leadership marks a key milestone in the organisation’s shift toward a future-ready operations model, driving structural and cultural change across a complex, global manufacturing and engineering footprint.

Transforming Global Functions

Transforming Production

A new Global Production Management Office has been established to drive operational standards, continuous improvement, and lean manufacturing across all sites. Uniform KPIs and structured knowledge-sharing will enable performance benchmarking and best practice adoption globally.

Engineering for Excellence

A world-class engineering function is being built, combining a centralised core team with strong, integrated plant-level hubs. Consistent tools and clear reporting lines will enable alignment and scalability across regions.

Successful Placements

Role Overview: Head of Production

Tasked with leading global production strategy across 10+ sites, this role drives alignment between Production, Quality, Engineering, and R&D. Candidates were mapped from sectors including Specialty Chemicals, Aerospace, and Advanced Manufacturing, with 24 senior leaders identified across the UK, EU, and North America.

Role Overview: Head of Engineering

Responsible for designing the future-state engineering model – reducing duplication, increasing throughput, and integrating central and local teams. The search focused on leaders from Capital Equipment, Advanced Automotive, and Industrial Tech sectors.

Conclusion & Future Outlook

This transformation marks a significant evolution in how the business will lead, engineer, and produce at a global level. Our role is to ensure that the right leadership is in place to drive it – leaders who bring not just technical excellence, but the cultural intelligence and strategic foresight to make lasting change happen.

To discover how Beaumont Bailey can support your next search for top leadership talent, please email James Pope, Managing Director, on: james.pope@beaumontbailey.com.