Lead Production Technician
manufacturing › Production · S5 — S5 — Principal Support Specialist · Support
Serves as the most experienced hands-on production worker, guiding daily line activities and troubleshooting complex issues without formal supervisory authority.
Median pay · United States · annual
$62,559 USD
▲ +62.4% vs S1 on this ladder
Typical range ()
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What this role is
Serves as the most experienced hands-on production worker, guiding daily line activities and troubleshooting complex issues without formal supervisory authority. 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
- Create and document new production-tracking and material-coordination procedures and standard work for the area, then roll them out to the floor
- Resolve the most complex, cross-shift production data and flow problems — recurring scrap sources, chronic downtime patterns — developing the method others then follow
- Serve as the go-to specialist and working lead facilitating peer execution of production recording, quality checks and troubleshooting across the line
- Lead the data and record-keeping side of continuous-improvement and lean projects, defining what gets measured and how it is captured
- Advise the production manager and engineering on process observations and data findings that drive efficiency and quality decisions
- Knowledge applied
- Highly skilled specialist who contributes to the creation of new production-tracking and material-flow procedures and standard work.
- Complexity & problem solving
- Resolves complex, chronic production data and flow problems; develops the concepts and techniques others adopt.
- Collaboration & interaction
- Acts as working lead/facilitator, provides peer guidance, and advises manager and engineering on data-driven decisions.
- Typical experience
- 6+ yrs; expert in production-floor support.
Skills at this level
- Production Data Tracking
- — Records and reconciles output quantities, downtime, scrap rates and efficiency metrics on shift logs and in the production tracking system, keeping the run history accurate.
- Material Delivery Coordination
- — Sequences and stages incoming material against the production schedule so the line does not run short, confirming receipts and flagging shortages before they cause a stoppage.
- Quality Control Support
- — Pulls sample parts at set intervals, checks them against tolerances on the check sheet, logs the readings and quarantines non-conforming product per procedure.
- Line Troubleshooting
- — Diagnoses routine production stoppages — jams, feed shortages, minor equipment malfunctions — and restores the run quickly or escalates with a precise description of the fault.
- Production Management Software
- — Enters, queries and reconciles run data using production management applications including Microsoft Access databases to produce daily status and efficiency summaries.
- Manufacturing Safety Compliance
- — Applies OSHA and plant safety rules on the floor — PPE, lockout, housekeeping — and reports hazards and incidents so the area stays compliant.
- Production Status Reporting
- — Communicates shift output, quality and line observations to the production manager and operators clearly at handover, so decisions are made on current information.
- Standard Work Documentation
- — Writes and updates the recording, material-coordination and quality-check procedures for the area so the routines are repeatable and can be trained to others.
- Continuous Improvement / Lean Support
- — Pulls and analyzes downtime and scrap history to expose recurring losses and supports lean initiatives with the data needed to target them.
- Operator Training
- — Onboards new operators on data-recording routines, quality check sheets, equipment operation and safety procedures for the production area.
Model-authored from 20 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.
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As of · 2026-07-30
Edition · canon-v2@2.1.0-complete
Source · canon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)
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