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Key statistics

The identity block — every fact is canon, none is generated.

5 of 8

Track

Support

Family rungs priced

S1 · S2 · S3 · S4 · S5

—

manufacturing

Coordinates

2 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Senior individual contributor who drives lean manufacturing methods and design-for-manufacture practices across product lines to speed time to market. At the Principal Support Specialist (S5) level, the role owns function-wide support practice, program-level and systemic support problems, and drives support strategy across the function. Subject-matter authority; shapes the practice.

What this level does

Contribute to the creation of new plant data-collection, audit, and sustainment procedures for the lean system where none exist, and standardize them for others to follow
Develop and maintain the plant's library of standard work-measurement templates, 5S/TPM audit criteria, and Kanban sizing methods as the recognized specialist
Facilitate and mentor peers and engineers on lean-toolkit execution, providing guidance that resolves complex, cross-area sustainment problems
Design measurement and error-proofing techniques for the most complex value streams, translating engineering intent into repeatable floor-level procedures
Act as working lead and facilitator for the plant's continuous-improvement audit program, setting the cadence and coaching data owners across areas

Knowledge applied: Highly skilled specialist in the plant's lean-system procedures; contributes to creating new measurement, audit, and sustainment methods.
Complexity & problem solving: Develops procedures and techniques; resolves complex, cross-area sustainment and measurement problems.
Collaboration & interaction: Acts as working lead/facilitator; provides guidance to and influences peers and engineers on lean-toolkit execution.
Typical experience: 6+ years; expert in lean-support methods and the plant's internal lean system.

Skills at this level

Work Measurement & Time Studies: — Measures Takt time, cycle time, changeover (SMED) duration, and lot-size requirements at the station using standardized observation methods, and compiles the data to support line balancing and Lean-line expansion.
5S & Visual Workplace Sustainment: — Audits and maintains 5S workplace organization, visual-management boards, and floor markings against the documented standard, logging drift and restoring conditions on the shop floor.
Kanban & Material Flow Upkeep: — Maintains Kanban cards and signals, verifies pull-system replenishment quantities, and captures material-flow data used to keep line flow aligned to Lean layout standards.
Error-Proofing (Poka-Yoke) Verification: — Confirms mistake-proofing devices are present and functioning at each station, logs device failures, and identifies recurring-waste points where new error-proofing is warranted.
TPM Audit Support: — Performs Total Productive Maintenance audit walks, records equipment-condition and autonomous-maintenance findings against the checklist, and tracks status across audit cycles.
Kaizen Event Logistics & Data Capture: — Sets up workshops targeted at changeovers, 5S, Value Stream, and workplace organization by staging materials and boards, and records before/after measurements during the event.
Value Stream Data Collection: — Gathers station-level and process-flow data needed to build and update value stream maps, reconciling observations against existing standard work.
Manufacturing Data Entry (ERP/MES): — Enters time-study, audit, and throughput measurements into the plant's ERP/MES spreadsheets and reports so engineering analysis works from accurate floor data.
Shop-Floor Problem-Solving Support: — Supports structured problem-solving on quality and productivity issues by tracing defects back through station data to isolate a probable cause for engineering confirmation.
Internal Lean-System Standards (SPS): — Interprets and applies the plant's proprietary lean production-system standards, and at senior levels helps create new floor-level procedures where written standards do not yet cover a situation.
Quality-Standards Compliance: — Keeps data-collection and housekeeping activities aligned with ISO quality standards and safety/environmental requirements applicable to the work area.

Model-authored from 18 retrieved sources, then adversarially reviewed by an independent judge panel and held to a minimum-evidence floor before publication. Distinct from corpus-extracted content, which is labelled as such.

Pay across the ladder

Lean Manufacturing — median with , by . Real canon data.

Pay figures are modeled estimates from our market equation — level-differentiated, with honest-wide bands. They refresh as new leveling evidence lands; treat per-role dollars as directional.

Demand — is the field growing, or just turning over?

Employment growth 2019–2024, BLS OEWSobserved

+8.6%First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers · United States

631,100 → 685,140 jobs

67,700 openings / year, split into:

replacement / exits 66,862

Growth — new jobs (1%)Exits — backfill (99%)

1% of hiring here is genuine expansion; the rest backfills people who move on.

Projected growth 2024–34 expanding: +1.2%
Growth share of hiring: 1%
Exit / retention pressure high: 99%
Openings / year: 67,700

Two quantities, kept apart: observed = employment growth differenced from two BLS OEWS vintages (what already happened); projected = BLS Employment Projections 2024–34, openings decomposed into growth + exits (growth derived from projected employment change). Neither is a pay figure.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$104k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$93k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$86k

Boulder, CO$85k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$85k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$82k

Lexington Park, MD$80k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$79k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $63k; the demand-cube initiative will add growth-by-metro.

What changes across the ladder

Level-distinction canon isn't available for the adjacent levels of this profile yet.

Level differentiators

What separates S5 (S5 — Principal Support Specialist) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Function-wide support practice
Autonomy: Sets direction for the support discipline
Complexity: Program-level and systemic support problems
Impact: Support strategy across the function
Decision rights: Authority over support practice and standards
Leadership: Subject-matter authority; shapes the practice

Full level-by-level matrix (side by side across the ladder) lives on the Ladder drill-down — not here.

Promotion

S5is the top of this family's ladder — progression from here is a lattice move (see adjacent roles below), not a rung.

Performance criteria for this profile render in the assessment kit →

People also watch

Nearest coordinate neighbors — same , same level. Each row's (confident / review / no match) comes from its — computed, not curated.

Profile	Key	Median	Δ structural
Chief Lean Manufacturing Officer	jf_lean_manufacturing::E5	$351,571	confident0.06
Director of Lean Manufacturing	jf_lean_manufacturing::M5	$194,360	confident0.06
Staff Lean Manufacturing Engineer	jf_lean_manufacturing::P5	$142,824	confident0.06
Advanced Lean Manufacturing Engineer	jf_lean_manufacturing::S4	$58,202	confident0.06

Capability cluster

O*NET 51-1011

Core to this role. Click any element with an ⓘ for its O*NET definition. A job-specific capability model (SkillFrame) will sharpen this and add worked examples.

The Job Swatch

S5

jf_lean_manufacturing::S5

Lead Lean Manufacturing Specialist

Lean Manufacturing

no content fingerprint

The swatch is JobFrame's core primitive: a hueset deterministically by the role's superfunction, the profileKey as its color code, the level ladder, and a content fingerprint. Two swatches that look alike are alike.

Because every role carries computable coordinates, similarity, leveling, and pricing become measurable instead of arguable— the whole point of "Pantone for jobs."

Structural

structural@1

Where it sits— position in the work taxonomy + level (weighted Gower, level > function > focus).

Track: S
Superfunction: manufacturing
Function: manufacturing_expansion
Family: lean_manufacturing
Universal level: 5 / 8

Content

content@2

What it's about— a fingerprint over the role's tasks & capabilities.

No content fingerprint for this profile.

Two roles can sit far apart structurally yet be close in content — that gap is itself a signal.

3-state matching

How any two swatches compare — a real distance in coordinate space, resolved to a calibrated verdict (never a fake "94% match").

Chemistry, Manufacturing & Controls (CMC) · S5review0.17

Machine Shop · S5review0.17

Maintenance · S5review0.17

Manufacturing Engineering · S5review0.17

Pilot Plant Operations · S5review0.17

Production Test · S5review0.17

Editions — frozen & versioned

structural@1live

Released 2026-06-17

content@2live

Released 2026-07-28

pay@2live

Released 2026-07-02

semantic@1live

Released 2026-07-02

Coordinates belong to a frozen, versioned edition — a coordinate computed today still means the same thing next quarter. Re-fitting issues a new edition, so comparisons are never silently redefined.

How to read this profile

Every number here is traceable — to a named source, a stated method, and an as-of date — and each value is labeled by how we know it: observed from data, computed by a model, projected forward, or governed canon. Nothing is a black box, and nothing is invented to fill a gap.

Where every number comes from

What	Source & method	Edition	State
Median pay + range	JobFrame pay equation (function base × family multiplier × level × focus differential)	pay@2	computed
Pay across the ladder	Same equation applied at each universal level	pay@2	computed
Demand — growth & openings	BLS Employment Projections; openings decomposed into growth + exits	EP 2024–34	projected
Pay by metro	BLS OEWS metropolitan medians	OEWS 2024	observed
Level distinctions	JobFrame universal-level canon (scope · autonomy · complexity · impact · decision rights · leadership)	canon	canon
Capability cluster	O*NET Knowledge / Skills / Abilities	O*NET 51-1011	computed
Coordinates	JobFrame coordinate system — structural (weighted Gower) + content fingerprint	structural@1 · content@2 · pay@2 · semantic@1	computed
Related roles	Nearest neighbors in the structural coordinate space	structural@1	computed

The principles behind the numbers

Ranges, not false precision

Pay is P10 · median · P90, never a single misleading number.

Three honest states, never a fake %

Role matches resolve to confident / review / no-match — a calibrated verdict, not a made-up percentage.

Provenance on every value

Each number carries whether it's observed, computed, projected, or canon — so you always know how much to lean on it.

Gaps shown as gaps

When a figure isn't available at the grain you need, we say so — we don't fabricate a number to fill the cell.

Frozen, versioned editions

Pay and coordinate editions are pinned, so a comparison you make today still means the same thing next quarter.

Privacy by min-N

Any aggregate over people is suppressed below a minimum count, so no individual is identifiable.

Freshness

As of2026-07-30Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)