OCM / Training Lead – Japanese Speaking

This is a full-time assignment supporting the program from the Explore phase through deployment and hypercare. The role requires substantial onsite presence at Japan-based sites, including support across multiple shifts during training delivery, cutover, and hypercare.

The OCM / Training Lead will work closely with the Program Manager, workstream leads, plant management, local HR, and training and communications teams.

Duration: 12 Months
Location: Remote
Travel Requirement: Requires 2–3 weeks of onsite travel to Japan per quarter
Work Authorization: U.S. Citizens only

Top Skills Required

1. Shop-Floor Change Management – Experience supporting paperless transformation initiatives and transitioning operators, inspectors, planners, and technicians from paper, Excel, and legacy tools to real-time, system-driven processes.

2. Multi-Language & Multi-Shift Training – Experience designing and delivering training programs across multiple manufacturing plants, shifts, and languages, including Japanese-speaking workforces.

3. Knowledge Capture – Strong experience documenting critical business processes, logic, and institutional knowledge currently maintained in spreadsheets or held by key individuals.

4. Adoption Measurement & Reinforcement – Experience defining adoption metrics, measuring user adoption through hypercare, and driving corrective actions to ensure successful implementation.
   

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Organizational Change Management (OCM) and Training Lead to support a large-scale manufacturing transformation program.

The program involves transitioning manufacturing operations from paper-based processes, Excel spreadsheets, and legacy tools to standardized, real-time, paperless SAP processes across multiple plants and business divisions.

The primary focus of this role will be managing the people side of transformation, including stakeholder engagement, communications, business readiness, role-based training, knowledge capture, and adoption measurement.

The successful candidate will support manufacturing personnel working across multiple shifts and sites and will play a critical role in ensuring successful adoption of new business processes and SAP technologies.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and lead the overall change management and training strategy across multiple workstreams, plants, and business functions.

• Conduct change impact assessments by role, business division, and plant location.

• Identify how new processes and systems will impact operators, inspectors, planners, warehouse personnel, maintenance technicians, controllers, and other end users.

• Develop and execute stakeholder engagement and communication plans for executives, plant management, supervisors, and shop-floor employees.

• Design and deliver role-based training programs, including:

  • Training curriculum

  • Hands-on system training

  • Work instructions

  • Quick-reference guides

  • Shop-floor dashboards

  • Quality inspection processes

  • Handheld terminal transactions

  • Planning processes

  • Maintenance execution

  • Costing processes

• Lead the language strategy for end-user training content, with Japanese as a primary shop-floor language and support for additional languages as required.

• Coordinate translation, terminology consistency, content review, and multilingual training materials.

• Lead structured knowledge capture from key business users and SMEs.

• Document critical business logic related to lot numbering, allocation, planning, inspection, and other undocumented business processes.

• Establish and support a super-user/key-user network across plants and shifts.

• Define business readiness criteria and conduct readiness assessments to support go/no-go decisions.

• Define role-based adoption metrics and monitor adoption throughout hypercare.

• Drive corrective actions where adoption data indicates that new processes or systems are not being effectively adopted.

• Support the transition away from legacy tools and address workaround behaviors.

Batch Management & Traceability Experience – Preferred

Batch Management and traceability experience is preferred but not required.

This is primarily a change management and training role; however, understanding lot and batch processes will help the candidate develop more effective training and adoption strategies.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Organizational Change Management and end-user training for enterprise system implementations.

• Experience supporting at least 3 full-lifecycle ERP implementations, including at least 1 SAP implementation.

• Demonstrated experience delivering change management and training to manufacturing shop-floor populations, including operators, inspectors, and technicians.

• Strong experience designing and delivering role-based training curricula.

• Experience developing:

  • Hands-on system training

  • Work instructions

  • Quick-reference guides

  • End-user training materials

• Experience supporting users with varying levels of technical and system proficiency.

• Experience managing training and enablement across multiple shifts and multiple manufacturing locations.

• Strong understanding of structured change management methodologies such as Prosci/ADKAR, Kotter, or equivalent.

• Experience conducting business readiness assessments and defining go/no-go criteria.

• Experience defining and measuring adoption metrics beyond training completion rates.

• Experience establishing and supporting sustainable super-user/key-user networks.

• Excellent written and verbal English communication skills.

• Ability to effectively communicate with both executive stakeholders and shop-floor employees.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Business-level bilingual proficiency in English and Japanese.

• Previous experience supporting change management initiatives in Japan or with Japanese manufacturing organizations.

• Familiarity with Japanese workplace culture, consensus-building practices, and shop-floor communication norms.

• Experience delivering multilingual training programs for multinational manufacturing workforces.

• Experience managing translation quality and terminology governance.

• Experience supporting the retirement of legacy tools and addressing user workaround behaviors.

• Familiarity with SAP Digital Manufacturing, operator dashboards, SAP Fiori, and handheld terminal interfaces.

• Experience with digital adoption platforms, in-application guidance tools, or SAP Enable Now.

• Formal change management certification such as Prosci or equivalent.

Preferred knowledge includes:

• Lot creation, splitting, merging, and identification processes.

• Transitioning lot and batch processes from paper and legacy tools into SAP.

• Batch status management and quality usage decisions.

• Changes to operator, inspector, and warehouse workflows resulting from digital batch management.

• Understanding the impact of lot and batch design on training timelines and content stabilization.