Job Details

Overview

Change Business Partner (Standard Costings, Manufacturing)

Remote USA (East Coast Time Zone preferred)
70% Travel
12 month Fixed Term Contract (W2 with benefits or 1099 considered)

$180-$220k + benefits if W2

Job Purpose:

The Change Business Partner will lead the people-side implementation of strategic transformation across manufacturing operations. This includes driving the adoption of new systems, processes, and behaviours that enhance efficiency, safety, and growth. A key focus will be supporting the deployment and behavioural integration of standard costing across manufacturing sites, ensuring consistency in cost control, performance tracking, and margin visibility. The role requires a strong understanding of manufacturing, ERP (notably Microsoft D365), and change facilitation to support both people and site-level transitions.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a trusted advisor to Business Unit leaders, site managers, and functional teams, aligning change initiatives with manufacturing and business priorities.
• Collaborate with the Highlander team in simplifying points of contact, improving clarity on local priorities and explaining core model deployment

• Lead and support change management efforts related to process improvements and ERP implementations, notably in the adoption of standard costing
• Collaborate with finance, operations, and system teams to ensure standard costing methods are clearly understood, implemented consistently, and aligned with the group's cost control and margin management goals.
• Support operational leaders in transitioning from legacy cost tracking practices to standardised cost models, clarifying the impact on performance measurement, variance reporting, and profitability analysis.
• Facilitate local understanding of how standard costs are built and maintained (including BOM accuracy, labour/machine cost drivers, and overhead allocation).
• Coordinate training and capability-building programs to embed cost awareness and ownership at all levels of the organisation, from planners to plant managers.
• Act as a liaison between Global Process Owners, central finance teams and production sites to translate costing policy into operational practice, including system inputs, data accuracy, and routine cost updates in D365.
• Help identify gaps in cost data, local processes, or system usage that could undermine the integrity of standard costing or its impact on decision-making.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering change management within an industrial or manufacturing environment
• Understands and leads for the to-be processes and ways of working

• Understanding and advocating good practices in principle and in detail for a range of topics especially standard costing (cost build-up, cost drivers, variance analysis, cost updates) and margin management, but also MRP, planning, and warehousing.
• Experience supporting or deploying standard costing frameworks within ERP systems (especially Microsoft D365), including training, data validation, and cost centre alignment.
• Ability to engage both finance and non-finance teams in understanding the operational impact of cost changes, cost performance, and product profitability.

• Proven ability to build relationships and influence frontline teams, middle management, and senior leaders.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, particularly in operational and technical contexts.
• Experience with ERP systems (JD Edwards, Microsoft D365) is a strong advantage.
• Comfortable working at different levels of the organisation
• Flexible to adapt to the changing business needs of the projects
• Serves as best practice/quality resource within Standard costing and ERP Transformations

Qualifications and Behaviours:

• Aptitude to learn and adapt, seeing change opportunities and encouraging others to seek positive change
• Change Management or Lean Six Sigma certification (Green Belt or higher) is an advantage.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in finance management or transformation, or multi-site general management roles within manufacturing or industrial sectors.

Morgan Advanced Materials is an EEO/AA/M/W/D/V Employer Ind-1

Morgan Advanced Materials is a business rich in history and innovation. Founded in the UK in 1856, we have grown into a global organisation with 70 sites in 18 countries. Our model to serve our customers where they need us has led to a diversified product range using our unparalleled expertise in ceramic and carbon materials, which we exploit to solve difficult problems for our customers across a diverse range of markets.

We are a purpose driven organisation. Our purpose is to use advanced materials to make the world more sustainable and to improve the quality of life. We deliver on that purpose through the products that we make, and the way that we make them.

We help our customers push the limits of their processes and products to meet the demanding requirements they face, from higher process temperatures to higher product performance to increasing miniaturisation.

Key Figures: Revenue £1,114.7m (2023), ~8,500 employees, manufacturing in 20+ countries, and a global customer portfolio. A UK PLC with head office located in Windsor, Berkshire UK. Listed on London Stock Exchange; Member of the FTSE 250 Index.