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Salary: USD 80,000 - 100,000 / annual
LettrLabs is disrupting the direct mail industry by combining AI with tangible marketing. The company produces handwritten and printed direct mail at scale, serving customers with geo-targeted campaigns that drive 5x return on conversions and 3x year-on-year growth.
As Production Supervisor in Los Angeles, you will own a production shift end-to-end: managing the people on it, executing the daily schedule, and keeping machines running. This is a hands-on floor role, not a desk job. You will spend your day at the machines, coaching operators, removing constraints, and troubleshooting equipment when issues arise. You will be the connecting point between the production floor, the Head of Production in Chicago, and the engineering team in Los Angeles.
Key responsibilities include:
**Lead the Shift**: Staff the shift to plan, balance operators across print, plotting, inserting, and finishing stations. Create and maintain shift schedules, monitor attendance, and flag coverage gaps early. Run daily start-of-shift huddles covering yesterday's results, today's plan, past-due work, and machine status. Build and maintain a cross-training matrix to eliminate single-point dependencies. Coordinate employee training on SOPs, safety, and responsibilities. Set clear performance standards, give real-time feedback, and handle attendance and conduct issues fairly.
**Hit the Daily Plan**: Translate production schedules into station-by-station plans and re-sequence when machines go down or jobs jump the queue. Manage the priority lane for urgent work. Protect on-time delivery by prioritizing past-due and at-risk jobs, escalating early when the day cannot be recovered. Understand machine capacity and flag when committed volume exceeds available resources. Keep work flowing between steps to prevent bottlenecks.
**Keep Equipment Running**: Train and hold operators to daily clean, inspect, and setup routines with posted standards. Ensure scheduled preventive maintenance happens on time. Follow escalation protocols for breakdowns, troubleshoot hands-on, and know when to bring in technicians or engineering. Log every stoppage with cause and duration. Lead structured problem-solving (5 Why, fishbone) on repeat failures and drive countermeasures to closure. Track OEE and reliability by machine type. Keep critical spares stocked and maintenance logs current in the CMMS. Maintain 5S discipline at every station.
**Partner with Leadership**: Give the Head of Production in Chicago clear, regular updates on shift performance, past-due volume, downtime, quality, safety, and risks. Work closely with the LA engineering team on equipment faults, modifications, and improvements. Provide detailed, reproducible fault information. Ensure every modification is followed by updated standard work and operator training.
**Protect Quality and Yield**: Own scrap on your shift and know which step generates it. Run first-piece approval and in-process checks. Hold standards for handwriting quality, print registration, insertion accuracy, and address legibility. Investigate customer-reported defects and close corrective actions properly.
**Inventory and Facility**: Conduct daily inventory counts and flag potential shortages before they affect the plan. Oversee receiving and verification of deliveries. Maintain required counts, logs, and tracking documents. Take ownership of day-to-day floor upkeep and coordinate facility repairs.
**Continuous Improvement**: Run kaizen with operators. Write and maintain standard work. Build visual management boards showing plan versus actual, machine status, and quality holds. Use AI tools to work faster on shift data, downtime patterns, and reporting.
**Requirements**
Manufacturing environment: Three or more years supervising production in a manufacturing, print, packaging, or fulfillment operation, with real accountability for output, quality, and cost. Must read production plans, understand takt and capacity, and know what to do when the day starts going wrong.
People management: Proven experience leading an hourly production team including hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, and performance management. Ability to hold difficult conversations without conflict, build cross-trained depth, and keep a team steady through peak weeks.
Hands-on TPM: Demonstrated ownership of Total Productive Maintenance on a floor (not from a spreadsheet): autonomous maintenance and CIL routines, PM schedule adherence, downtime capture and analysis, OEE, and structured root cause problem-solving. Mechanical aptitude to troubleshoot alongside technicians and willingness to get hands-on with equipment.
Cross-site and cross-functional communication: Clear written and verbal communication with leadership in another location and with engineering. Ability to write shift handovers, escalations, and corrective actions that another person can act on. Comfortable working across time zones.
Formally required: Formal TPM training OR minimum 5 years of experience working in a TPM facility. Mechanical and electro-mechanical aptitude: able to read a manual, follow a fault tree, and use hand tools confidently. Data literacy: comfortable in Excel and in ERP, MES, or CMMS systems, able to use production dashboards to make decisions. Working knowledge of OSHA requirements, lockout/tagout, and machine guarding. Able to work on the production floor for a full shift: standing and walking throughout, occasional lifting to 50 lb, exposure to machine noise, paper dust, and ink. Able to work the primary shift and provide weekend and peak-season coverage.
Nice to haves: Direct mail, commercial print, bindery, packaging, or high-mix fulfillment experience. Experience introducing autonomous maintenance to a team new to TPM. CMMS implementation or administration. Experience working directly with in-house engineering on custom-built or modified equipment. Bilingual English/Spanish.
