Operations leadership · Interim, GM & board

When execution cannot fail.

I’m Soheil Makdessi. I lead where the work happens, and I answer for it — on the floor and in the boardroom. Owners and executive teams bring me in when an industrial operation has to recover, scale or simply keep its promises. The level follows the situation: production manager, COO, or the whole factory as its general manager.

I’m Soheil Makdessi. I lead where the work happens — from production manager to COO or factory GM — and answer for it, shop floor to boardroom.

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Explore

At home in

Space & aerospace
Electrical products
Plastics & polymers
Packaging
Precision & high-volume assembly
Manual production

The experience · if you want it

Take the walk with me.

From the boardroom, past the wall with the problems, down to the machines and all the way out to the dock — the way I have lived it. Or keep scrolling: everything essential is right here on this page.

2 minutes · silent · you set the pace · back exactly where you were

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Every level of operations

The title is not the point. The mandate is.

I have led at every level on this ladder — usually under a bigger title, with a wider scope — and I still take whichever one the situation calls for. That range is the offer: a leader who reads a P&L and a takt board with the same ease.

Production ManagerShifts, takt, staffing and daily output
Operations / Site ManagerCross-functional flow, from goods-in to dispatch
Plant DirectorFull site P&L, people and performance
COO / Operations DirectorEnd-to-end mandate across production, supply chain and engineering
General Manager / Factory CEOThe whole unit as one business: P&L, customers, organisation, result
Board & Expert CallsCertified board member; advisory for owners and investors

From the factory’s top seat down to production manager — too broad? It is the other way around.

Companies call when something has to change and the change needs seniority. Sometimes that means standing beside the CEO as a senior operator who steadies the operation. Sometimes it means taking the top seat itself, running a factory or unit as its general manager, with the whole business on my desk.

In a mid-size industrial company the top job is an operational job, and the distance from that seat to the floor is short. That is why one person can hold the whole range. I own the result from day one, whether the mandate stays interim or becomes permanent, and whether I move on once it holds or stay to run it. What I never become is the caretaker who only presides.

And operations move in every direction. I have run all four:

UpRamp-up — from prototype to serial delivery
DownRamp-down and redundancies, under control
OutClosures, transfers and outsourcing
InInsourcing that strengthens your own plant

One discipline runs under every level: operational excellence.

I led it as a group function across European operations before I ran it inside a full P&L. I have both built the system and answered for its results.

Documented results

The numbers hold up.

Every figure comes from a real mandate — several from years when the whole unit was mine to answer for, customers and P&L included. The people I answered to are on record about the work. You will find them under client testimonials.

0Serious workplace accidents in the four years I ran the plant

90 → 97%Delivery performance at a high-volume plant, sustained over years

26 → 5Working days of customer lead time, cut in a manual-assembly flow while critical equipment came back in-house

+7%^/yrProductivity at a mature factory, met as a hard annual requirement

150+A site of that size closed and its production moved to five plants in four countries, deliveries protected

60+Specialists and operators recruited mid-ramp — against the region’s biggest aerospace employer, for the same people

Four closures and transfers, seen from four different seats: one I led end-to-end, one I decided from the board, one whose customer-critical line I protected from head office, and one that closed my own role.

The industries behind these numbers include aerospace, electrical products, plastics and packaging. Which company did what is something I walk through in a call, not on a website. Your situation gets the same discretion — it will never appear here either.

What I do

Four ways to engage me

The mandates differ in scope. The condition does not: I answer for the result, not for the recommendation.

Interim Operations Leadership

General manager or factory CEO of the whole unit, down through COO, operations director, head of operations, plant or production manager. The situation decides the level; the mandate matters more than the title.

Head of Operations to COO in four months, on results.

Turnaround & Stabilisation

When delivery, quality or cost has drifted. Diagnosis on the floor, a practical plan, and execution together with the team until performance holds.

90 → 97 % delivery, held for years.

Ramp-up, Transfer & Transformation

From prototype to serial production, factory moves, closures and consolidations. Unions, customers and timelines handled with respect and control.

60+ recruited mid-ramp · five sites, four countries.

Board Work & Expert Calls

Certified board member. Operating partner to owners and investors, board assignments and expert calls — an executive operator’s judgement on an industrial business.

Built the case, sat on the board that took the decision.

Looking at an industrial asset, or a holding that is behind its case? The operating-partner mandate →

How I work

Executive level. Close to the floor.

Results in operations are created where the work happens. So that is where I spend my time: with operators, technicians, supervisors and site management, and with the data they live with every day.

I diagnose before I prescribe, at the pace the situation allows. An expert call gets hours. A delivery crisis gets my first week on the floor. A full mandate gets a structured verification before any programme starts. The order never changes: operators first, then line managers, then the executive team, and the data settles the argument.

“Even though Soheil operated several levels above my role, he consistently took the time to understand how processes worked on the shop-floor. By listening to operators and engineers, he drove improvements that optimized flow and processes in a very practical way.”

Client testimonials

Voices on record.

“The way he started, onboarded and drove first improvements was benchmark for an interim operations leader.”

Paul Horstink · Executive Vice President, Beyond Gravity — the one who hired me

Read all testimonials →

The industries

Same leadership. Different floors.

I have run serial production of space components, high-volume electrical products, plastics and regulated pharmaceutical packaging — automated lines, precision machining, manual production and assembly. The product changes. The way a floor is led does not.