Production managers spend the majority of their time ensuring everything is running smoothly and efficiently. They come up with different processes, policies, and procedures in order to increase production and improve efficiency.
Aside from being a great leader, production managers are crazy-good at planning. Since they have to hit deadlines, they have everything planned down to the second. That's why efficiency is the name of their game. They want to ensure goals and deadlines are not only met, but also completed.
While they're consistently focused on meeting deadlines, production managers care a great deal about safety. A safe work environment equals a safe and happy team. That's why production managers place a huge emphasis on complying with safety policies and regulations. A safety rule a day keeps the work incidents at bay.
Production Manager Overview
Working as a Production Manager
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a production manager. For example, did you know that they make an average of $34.74 an hour? That's $72,269 a year!
What Does a Production Manager Do
There are certain skills that many production managers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed interpersonal skills, leadership skills and problem-solving skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a production manager, we found that a lot of resumes listed 7.6% of production managers included continuous improvement, while 6.6% of resumes included customer service, and 5.9% of resumes included quality standards. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the production manager job title. But what industry to start with? Most production managers actually find jobs in the manufacturing and retail industries.
How To Become a Production Manager
If you're interested in becoming a production manager, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 47.8% of production managers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 12.1% of production managers have master's degrees. Even though most production managers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a production manager. When we researched the most common majors for a production manager, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on production manager resumes include high school diploma degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a production manager. In fact, many production manager jobs require experience in a role such as production supervisor. Meanwhile, many production managers also have previous career experience in roles such as operations manager or manager.
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Production Manager Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a production manager can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as operations manager, progress to a title such as general manager and then eventually end up with the title general manager of operations.
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Average Salary for a Production Manager
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Goodwin Recruiting Production Manager Production Manager | Goodwin Recruiting Goodwin Recruiting | 01/31/2021 01/31/2021 | $75,00001/31/2021 $75,000 |
Hirelevel. Production Manager Production Manager | Hirelevel. Hirelevel. | 01/31/2021 01/31/2021 | $45,00001/31/2021 $45,000 |
Randstad Production Manager Production Manager | Randstad Randstad | 01/29/2021 01/29/2021 | $72,80001/29/2021 $72,800 |
Job Juncture Production Manager Production Manager | Job Juncture Job Juncture | 01/29/2021 01/29/2021 | $78,50001/29/2021 $78,500 |
Tristarr Title Production Manager Title Production Manager | Tristarr Tristarr | 01/28/2021 01/28/2021 | $45,00001/28/2021 $45,000 |
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Production Manager Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Production Manager. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Production Manager Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Production Manager resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Colleges for Production Managers
1. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
2. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. Maine Maritime Academy
Castine, ME • Public
5. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
6. California State University - Bakersfield
Bakersfield, CA • Public
7. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Public
8. Villanova University
Villanova, PA • Private
9. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Public
10. Bentley University
Waltham, MA • Private
Top Skills For a Production Manager
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 7.6% of production managers listed continuous improvement on their resume, but soft skills such as interpersonal skills and leadership skills are important as well.
- Continuous Improvement, 7.6%
- Customer Service, 6.6%
- Quality Standards, 5.9%
- Safety Procedures, 5.6%
- Production Supervisors, 5.2%
- Other Skills, 69.1% See All Production Manager Skills
Best States For a Production Manager
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a production manager. The best states for people in this position are Washington, Alaska, Louisiana, and Wyoming. Production managers make the most in Washington with an average salary of $101,396. Whereas in Alaska and Louisiana, they would average $98,534 and $93,190, respectively. While production managers would only make an average of $84,914 in Wyoming, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. West Virginia
$83,816
Avg. Salary
2. Washington
$101,396
Avg. Salary
3. Louisiana
$93,191
Avg. Salary
How Do Production Manager Rate Their Jobs?
Top Production Manager Employers
We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ production managers and discovered their number of production manager opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that Murphy-Brown was the best, especially with an average salary of $46,250. Aramark follows up with an average salary of $56,514, and then comes McDonald's with an average of $54,833. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a production manager. The employers include Advanced Drainage Systems, Infor, and Jbcstyle
Production Manager Videos
