President, Detroit Thermal Systems
Overview:
About DTS
Detroit Thermal Systems (DTS) is a leading minority-owned automotive supplier headquartered in Romulus, Michigan. Since 2012, DTS has specialized in the development and manufacture of high-quality heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems and climate control components for the automotive industry, combining advanced technology with rigorous manufacturing standards and commitment to workforce diversity.
Summary
The President is the senior leader responsible for stabilizing, leading, and transforming the business through a period of operational and organizational stabilization. This role holds full accountability across safety, quality, delivery, cost, people, customer performance, and financial results, while establishing the leadership discipline, governance, and management systems required for sustained recovery and long-term performance.
The President leads across Operations, Program Management, Sales & Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, IT, Purchasing / Supply Chain, Product Engineering, Quality / Warranty / Advanced QMS / SQE, and Advanced Manufacturing Engineering. This leader must assess business risk quickly, stabilize execution, reinforce customer and stakeholder confidence, clarify priorities, and build a high-accountability leadership culture.
Responsibilities:
Strategic Business and Stabilization Leadership- Serve as the senior business leader with full accountability for business continuity, operating performance, customer confidence, and financial results.
- Lead the stabilization agenda by assessing current-state performance, organizational risk, leadership gaps, and execution barriers; translate findings into a focused recovery plan.
- Establish clear priorities, decision rights, escalation paths, and governance routines to support rapid stabilization and aligned execution.
- Direct the business to achieve targets for safety, quality, delivery, cost, inventory, labor efficiency, and launch readiness.
- Lead coordinated actions to protect customer performance and recover quickly from disruptions, misses, or escalations.
- Drive operating discipline across production, materials, engineering, maintenance, quality, and support functions.
- Advance operational excellence through standardization, continuous improvement, waste reduction, and process optimization.
- Develop go to market growth strategies for contract manufacturing and new business growth.
- Move the organization from reactive problem-solving to disciplined management routines and sustainable performance.
- Own full P&L performance, including revenue, margins, conversion, labor efficiency, inventory, capital discipline, and cash management.
- Partner with Finance to improve forecast accuracy, cost visibility, profitability analysis, and corrective-action tracking.
- Support commercial health in partnership with Sales and Program Management, especially where pricing, sourcing, launch, or customer recovery issues affect performance.
- Balance urgent recovery actions with medium-term business viability and disciplined investment choices.
- Establish and maintain effective business controls, continuity planning, and leadership governance during periods of transition or instability.
- Partner with Finance, HR, IT, Legal, and Quality to safeguard business assets, secure key decisions, and reduce operational and compliance risk.
- Escalate critical issues early and ensure timely intervention when performance, people stability, or stakeholder trust is at risk.
- Serve as the senior business point of alignment with executive leadership on status, risks, priorities, and support needs.
- Align Operations, Program Management, Commercial, Finance, HR, IT, Supply Chain, Engineering, Quality, and Manufacturing functions around shared business priorities and measurable results.
- Remove silos, improve decision quality, and reinforce clear accountability across the leadership team.
- Ensure leaders understand both functional responsibilities and enterprise implications of their decisions.
- Build and lead a high-accountability leadership team capable of operating effectively in a growth environment.
- Assess organizational health, retention risk, capability gaps, and succession needs; partner with HR on action plans.
- Set clear expectations for performance, conduct, leadership behavior, and management discipline.
- Build a culture of ownership, transparency, urgency, trust, and follow-through.
- Ensure compliance with all safety, labor, environmental, and regulatory requirements.
- Maintain confidence with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders by ensuring steady leadership, clear communication, and reliable execution.
- Represent the business credibly with internal and external stakeholders and support executive-level communication during periods of transition or recovery.
Qualifications:
Education / Experience / Skills & Abilities- Bachelor’s degree required; Engineering, Operations, Business, Supply Chain, Finance, or related field preferred.
- Master’s degree or MBA preferred.
- 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in manufacturing, automotive, or similarly complex industrial environments.
- Significant experience leading a plant, site, business unit, or multifunctional operating environment with direct accountability for results.
- Prior scalation, restructuring, transformation, or recovery leadership experience strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated success leading across operations, engineering, quality, supply chain, finance, commercial, and people leadership.
- Strong financial and operational acumen, including P&L responsibility and performance-management discipline.
- Experience in customer-facing leadership and high-pressure stakeholder environments.
- Labor relations / union experience preferred.
- Proven ability to build leadership credibility quickly, make sound decisions under ambiguity, and sustain execution under pressure.
Key Competencies
Competency
Definition
Ensures Accountability
Holds self and others accountable to meet commitments.
Drives Results
Consistently achieves results, even under tough circumstances.
Decision Quality
Makes good and timely decisions that keep the organization moving forward.
Manages Complexity
Makes sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.
Plans and Aligns
Plans and prioritizes work to meet commitments aligned with organizational goals.
Optimizes Work Processes
Knows the most effective and efficient processes to get things done, with a focus on continuous improvement.
Strategic Mindset
Sees ahead to future possibilities and translates them into breakthrough strategies.
Balances Stakeholders
Anticipates and balances the needs of multiple stakeholders.
Customer Focus
Builds strong customer relationships and delivers customer-centric solutions.
Instills Trust
Gains the confidence and trust of others through honesty and authenticity.
Courage
Steps up to address difficult issues and says what needs to be said.
Situational Adaptability
Adapts approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations.
Develops Talent
Develops people to meet both their career goals and the organization’s goals.
Action Oriented
Takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm.
Resourcefulness
Secures and deploys resources effectively and efficiently.
Preferred Candidate Profile- An executive-caliber operator who can stabilize a business in disruption without creating unnecessary noise.
- A leader who can restore confidence with customers, executives, partners, and internal teams through visible ownership and reliable execution.
- A cross-functional business leader who understands operations deeply but can also integrate finance, commercial, quality, engineering, supply chain, HR, and IT priorities.
- A leader who can distinguish structural issues from execution failures and make difficult talent, pace, and resource decisions with sound judgment.
- A builder of management discipline who can move the organization from firefighting to standard work, governance, and sustained accountability.
- A coach and culture leader who develops successors, strengthens the leadership bench, and leaves the business stronger than they found it.
- An experienced leader with demonstrated product design and validation skills to guide the organization through the transition away from the JV and to support business growth and transformation.
- A strong leader driving direct engagement with customers and design/validation partners to set product direction, manage technical risk, and enable scalable growth.