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Key statistics

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

4 of 8

Track

Support

Family rungs priced

—

51-0000

—

Coordinates

3 / 4 spaces

pay@2 · 2026-07

What this role is

Advanced individual contributor who drives continuous improvement initiatives across manufacturing operations. At the Lead Support Specialist (S4) level, the role owns team process and quality, cross-case patterns and process gaps, and drives team-level quality and efficiency. Mentors and coordinates the support team.

What this level does

Adapt data-collection and audit methods for unfamiliar lines or unprecedented process problems where no existing form or routine fits
Reconcile conflicting KPI and root-cause data across process areas and recommend which improvement leads warrant OpEx investigation
Administer the site's improvement-project tracking system, resolving structural and data-integrity issues and defining how projects are logged and reported
Act as working lead on data and documentation for multi-area improvement programs, coordinating the work of less experienced support staff
Support root-cause problem-solving sessions by assembling the analysis, running the numbers, and challenging data quality before conclusions are drawn

Knowledge applied: Extensive knowledge of CI procedures and their administration, enough to adapt methods for unprecedented lines and problems.
Complexity & problem solving: Understands implications of data and recommends new solutions; determines methods for new assignments and resolves conflicts in the data.
Collaboration & interaction: May informally guide less experienced support staff as a working lead on multi-area program data.
Typical experience: 4–6 yrs; advanced OpEx support experience.

Skills at this level

Production Data Collection & KPI Tracking: — Captures cycle counts, downtime, scrap and throughput data on the shop floor and maintains KPI trackers and boards used to monitor process performance against target.
SOP Documentation & Version Control: — Drafts, versions and maintains standard operating procedures, replacing superseded copies at the line and confirming operators work to the current revision.
5S & Standard-Work Auditing: — Runs scheduled 5S and standard-work audits, records findings against visual-management standards, and re-checks previously open items for closure.
Kaizen Event Support & Action-Item Tracking: — Stages Kaizen event logistics and materials, tracks the resulting action-item lists to closure, and verifies that implemented changes actually held.
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) Data Support: — Gathers takt, cycle-time and inventory data and assembles the data sets used to build value-stream maps for line studies.
Root Cause Problem Solving: — Assembles and reconciles process data to help locate where variation or inefficiency arises and to support root-cause analysis sessions.
Improvement-Project Tracking Administration: — Administers the system that logs improvement projects, resolving data-integrity issues and defining how projects are recorded and reported across process areas.
Operator Training on Standard Work: — Delivers hands-on instruction to line operators on new standard work and 5S routines and monitors early adoption and compliance.
Statistical / Quantitative Data Analysis: — Applies basic statistical tools to production data to describe process capability, identify variation, and quantify the effect of implemented improvements.

Model-authored from 22 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

No priced rungs for this family's ladder yet.

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?

SOC 51-0000 · national

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 this role sits — growth vs. pay

level S4 held

Demand axis is projected growth (not raw openings — that just measures churn). A curated, de-duplicated set of recognizable occupations held at this level; this role is highlighted.

Where it pays — by metro

OEWS metro median

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA$94k

San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA$84k

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV$78k

Boulder, CO$77k

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA$77k

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH$74k

Lexington Park, MD$72k

Trenton-Princeton, NJ$71k

Pay only — metro-level demand isn't in public data (it needs job postings). National median $56k; 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 S4 (S4 — Lead Support Specialist) from the levels around it — this level only. Every word is real canon for this profile.

Scope: Team process and quality
Autonomy: Works independently; owns improvements
Complexity: Cross-case patterns and process gaps
Impact: Team-level quality and efficiency
Decision rights: Owns process and quality decisions for the team
Leadership: Mentors and coordinates the support team

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

Promotion

The next rung from S4 is S5.

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
Advanced Accountant	jfo_jfm_accounting-controllership-accounting-management::S4	—	confident0.00
Advanced Cost Accountant	jfo_jfm_accounting-cost-accounting::S4	—	confident0.00
Advanced General Accountant	jfo_jfm_accounting-general-accounting-management::S4	—	confident0.00
Advanced General Accountant	jfo_jfm_accounting-general-accounting::S4	—	confident0.00

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

S4

jfo_jfm_manufacturing-operations-operational-excellence-in-manufactu::S4

Operational Excellence Analyst

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
Universal level: 4 / 8

Content

content@2

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

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").

jfo_jfm_accounting-controllership-accounting-management::S4 · S4confident0.00

jfo_jfm_accounting-cost-accounting::S4 · S4confident0.00

jfo_jfm_accounting-general-accounting-management::S4 · S4confident0.00

jfo_jfm_accounting-general-accounting::S4 · S4confident0.00

jfo_jfm_administrative-corporate-services-administrative-services-ma::S4 · S4confident0.00

jfo_jfm_administrative-corporate-services-service-delivery::S4 · S4confident0.00

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 of2026-07-31Editioncanon-v2@2.1.0-completeSourcecanon-v2 cell + salary-benchmark (model)