Production Supervisor

LettrLabs · Los Angeles · $70,000–$85,000 (stated in the posting)

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LettrLabs is disrupting a $30B industry by uniting AI with tangible marketing. When a storm hits, our platform geo-locates to zip code, activates direct mail campaigns in minutes, and tracks every conversion back to digital, driving 5x return on conversions and 3x year-on-year growth for our customers.

LettrLabs produces handwritten and printed direct mail at scale. As a Production Supervisor in Los Angeles, you will own a shift end to end: the people on it, the schedule it has to achieve, and the machines that have to stay running to achieve it. This is a floor job, not a desk job. You will spend your day at the machines, coaching operators, clearing constraints, and putting your hands on equipment when it goes down.

You will also be the connecting point between the floor, our Head of Production in Chicago, and our engineering team in Los Angeles. You will report production performance and risks to the Head of Production every day, bring engineering clear, detailed fault information so recurring problems get fixed at the root, and carry changes and standards back to the floor. We are looking for a supervisor who treats machine uptime as their own responsibility. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is not a program we ask you to support. It is how the shift is expected to run, and you will lead it at the machine.

• Own a shift end to end at the heart of a fast-growing direct mail manufacturer, where your work is visible in every customer mailing.

• Work with custom-built and modified equipment alongside in-house engineers and technicians who build and improve it.

• Report to the Head of Production and partner with engineering, with real influence on the standard for production performance, processes, and culture as we scale.

• Lead with TPM: autonomous maintenance, root cause, and OEE are how we run, not a side project.

• Competitive compensation with meaningful equity upside.

• People and coverage: Staff the shift to the day's plan and balance operators across print, plotting, inserting, and finishing as the workload moves. Create and maintain the shift schedule, monitor attendance, and flag coverage gaps early.

• Daily direction: Run a short start-of-shift huddle covering yesterday's result, today's plan, what is past due, and which machines are down. Run routine floor check-ins to find bottlenecks early.

• Capability and training: Build and maintain a cross-training matrix so no station depends on one person. Coordinate and oversee employee training on SOPs, safety, and responsibilities, and close training gaps.

• Performance: Set clear standards, give feedback in the moment, run performance conversations, and handle attendance and conduct issues early and fairly.

• Safety: Own safety on your shift, including hazard walks, near-miss reporting, lockout/tagout discipline, and making it normal for anyone to stop a machine they are not comfortable with.

• Handover: Deliver a clean written handover to the next shift covering what ran, what did not, and what comes next.

• Schedule execution: Translate the production schedule into a station-by-station plan and re-sequence when a machine goes down or a job jumps the queue. Manage the priority lane so urgent work stays visible.

• Priorities: Protect on-time delivery by working past-due and at-risk jobs first, and escalate early when the day cannot be recovered.

• Capacity: Understand what each plotter type can actually produce in a shift, and flag when committed volume exceeds the machines and people available.

• Flow: Keep work moving between steps so jobs do not pile up ahead of the plotting or envelope stations.

• Coordination: Align daily and upcoming plans with the Assistant Operations Managers and leadership, and communicate anticipated workload, staffing needs, and risks.

This is the part of the role we will screen hardest on.

• Autonomous maintenance: Train and hold operators to daily clean, inspect, and setup, with standards posted at the point of use.

• Planned maintenance: Make sure scheduled PMs happen on time, not when the machine finally breaks. Track adherence and protect the window, and schedule service appointments and third-party vendors when needed.

• Breakdown response: Follow the escalation protocol for timely intervention, troubleshoot hands-on, and know when to bring in a technician, engineering, or an outside provider.

• Downtime discipline: Log every stoppage with cause and duration, then use the data to find the machines and failure modes that cost the most time.

• Root cause: Lead structured problem solving (5 Why, fishbone) on repeat failures and drive countermeasures to closure so the same fault does not come back next month.

• OEE and reliability: Track availability, performance, and quality by machine type, and use it to argue for spares, rebuilds, or replacement.

• Spares and records: Keep critical spares and consumables stocked and the maintenance log current in the CMMS.

• Workplace organization: 5S at every station, shadow boards, visual standards, and equipment clean enough that a leak or a loose part is obvious.

• Give the Head of Production in Chicago clear, regular updates on shift performance, past-due volume, downtime, quality, safety, and risks, and flag problems early rather than after the miss.

• Take direction on priorities, KPIs, and standards from the Head of Production and carry them to the floor consistently across shifts.

• Work closely and frequently with the LA engineering team on equipment faults, modifications, and improvements. Give engineering detailed, reproducible fault information, and make sure every modification is followed by updated standard work and operator training.

• Bring floor feedback to engineering and leadership so improvements are built around how the machines are really run.

• Keep written escalations, handovers, and corrective actions clear enough that someone in another city or on another team can act on them.

• Scrap: Own scrap on your shift. Know which step generates it, not just the total, and close the causes.

• Verification: Run first-piece approval and in-process checks so a mis-set machine is caught in the first hundred pieces, not the first ten thousand.

• Standards: Hold standards for handwriting quality, print registration, insertion accuracy, and address legibility on plotted envelopes.

• Corrective action: Investigate defects that reach the customer and close corrective actions properly.

• Conduct daily inventory counts, keep records accurate, and flag potential shortages before they affect the plan.

• Oversee the receiving and verification of deliveries and keep supplies, sample packs, and trade show materials organized and available.

• Maintain oversight of required counts, logs, and tracking documents, including Pitney Bowes mail slips.

• Take ownership of day-to-day upkeep of the floor, run walkthroughs, and coordinate facility repairs and recurring services with the maintenance technician.

• Continuous improvement: Run kaizen with the operators who do the work, not to them.

• Standard work: Write and maintain standard work so the job runs the same way on every shift.

• Visual management: Build boards that make the shift's status obvious from ten feet away: plan versus actual, machine status, and quality holds.

• Use Claude and other AI tools to work faster on shift data, downtime patterns, SOP updates, and reporting.

• Three or more years supervising production in a manufacturing, print, packaging, or fulfillment operation, with real accountability for output, quality, and cost.

• You read a production plan, understand takt and capacity, and know what to do when the day starts going wrong.

• Proven experience leading an hourly production team: hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, and performance managing.

• You can hold a difficult conversation without it becoming a conflict, build cross-trained depth, and keep a team steady through a peak week.

• 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.

• The mechanical aptitude to troubleshoot alongside your technicians, and the willingness to get on the machine.

• Clear written and verbal communication with leadership in another location and with engineering: shift handovers, escalations, and corrective actions that another person can act on.

• Comfortable working across time zones with the Head of Production in Chicago and building a trusted working relationship with engineers.

• Formal TPM training, or a minimum of 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, and able to use a production dashboard to make decisions rather than just report from it.

• 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, and exposure to machine noise, paper dust, and ink.

• Able to work the primary shift and provide weekend and peak-season coverage.

• Direct mail, commercial print, bindery, packaging, or high-mix fulfillment experience.

• Experience introducing autonomous maintenance to a team that has not run it before.

• CMMS implementation or administration.

• Experience working directly with in-house engineering on custom-built or modified equipment.

• Bilingual English/Spanish.

In the first 90 days

• You know every machine on your shift, every operator by name, and which of the two is your bigger constraint.

• Daily clean, inspect, and lubricate routines are running at every station and being done without you standing there.

• Downtime is logged with a cause every time, and you can name your top three repeat failures with data behind them.

• A cross-training matrix exists, is visible, and has a plan against its gaps.

• You have a working rhythm with the Head of Production in Chicago and with engineering, with regular updates and clear fault escalations.

Ongoing

• Schedule attainment: Jobs completed against the daily plan, with past-due volume trending down week over week.

• Machine availability: Uptime and OEE by plotter type, PM schedule adherence, and mean time between failures improving.

• Quality: Scrap rate against target by production step, customer-reported defects, and corrective actions closed on time.

• Safety: Recordable incidents, near-misses reported and closed, and audit findings.

• People: Retention and attendance on shift, cross-training coverage, and internal promotions from your team.

• Communication: Timely, clear updates to the Head of Production and engineering, with escalations that are acted on.

LettrLabs USA: $70,000 to $85,000 + Equity

Actual base salary offered will be determined by: experience, skills, and work location. This range is for base salary; our total compensation includes equity and benefits. We welcome you to apply even if your expectations are outside our listed range.

• Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage

• Equity in a fast-growing company

• 401(k) plan.

• Flexible PTO and paid holidays

• On-site gym

• Pet-friendly

• Free daily lunch, team off-sites, and happy hours

• Located in the heart of Marina Del Rey, a walkable neighborhood with easy access to shops, restaurants, and the marina

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