Consultant - Manufacturing

Who You Will Work With

Driving lasting impact and building long-term capabilities with our clients is not easy work. You are the kind of person who thrives in a high performance/high reward culture - doing hard things, picking yourself up when you stumble, and having the resilience to try another way forward.

In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we'll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities you need to become a stronger leader faster than you ever thought possible. Your colleagues—at all levels—will invest deeply in your development, just as much as they invest in delivering exceptional results for clients. Every day, you'll receive apprenticeship, coaching, and exposure that will accelerate your growth in ways you won’t find anywhere else.

When you join us, you will have:

• Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey.

• A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You’ll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes.

• Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm’s diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions for our clients. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.

• World-class benefits: On top of a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we provide a comprehensive benefits package to enable holistic well-being for you and your family.

What You Will Do

As a consultant in our two-year Operations Excellence Program (OEP), you will work on client engagements in the same way as any other McKinsey consultant. You will play an active role in problem solving for clients including identifying issues, forming hypotheses, designing, and conducting analyses, and synthesizing conclusions into recommendations. You will gain leading edge operations and consultancy skills, primarily through on-the-job coaching, which will be complemented by the OEP’s structured capability-building program.

We view the OEP position as the start of a rewarding, challenging and highly flexible career with McKinsey and the Operations practice. During your first few years with the firm, you will serve as a consultant on multiple client engagements and work with a number of colleagues and clients in a range of industry and operations service lines. You will acquire the necessary knowledge and expertise to help companies achieve excellence in their operations.

Along with other members of the OEP community, you will dedicate many days to functional training and knowledge development under the leadership of our operations experts. You will follow a curriculum based on operations excellence themes and will receive advanced training in one of six specific areas of operations: manufacturing, product development, purchasing, service operations, supply chain management, or capital excellence.

Upon completion of the program, successful consultants will join our global group of leading experts in operational excellence. We already have OEP graduates working at all levels of the firm from associate to partner.

You will be based in one of our European offices as part of our Operations Practice.

Our Operations Practice assists our clients in solving complex operational challenges. Blending strategic thinking with hands-on practicality, our teams of consultants and experts work to develop and implement operational strategies that solve our clients’ most critical problems.

McKinsey’s Manufacturing service line is part of our Operations Practice and helps leading companies in all industries develop and implement future-oriented lean manufacturing strategies. Our clients include leading companies worldwide from a wide range of industries. We offer their managements support and advice on strategic and operational questions relating to Lean Manufacturing.

Please submit your application in English, including your CV and transcripts (high school, university, etc.), with all relevant grades.

#Operations2026 #EuropeEP

Your Background

• Master’s degree and exceptional academics required

• Initial experience in Lean Manufacturing (e.g., Toyota Production System, kaizen methods, TPM, JIT, SMED) and/or in quality and compliance (e.g., quality gates, Six Sigma, cGMP regulations, remediation).

• Proven record of leadership in a work setting and/or through extracurricular activities

• Mobility and enthusiasm for taking on European assignments during the work week

• Exceptional analytical and quantitative problem-solving skills

• Ability to communicate complex ideas effectively, both verbally and in writing, in English and local office language