About Soheil Makdessi — Executive Operator & Interim COO

Transformation & executive advisory

An executive with a strong operational identity

I’ve spent my career close to production and the people who run it. I’ve led through complexity, pressure and transformation in industrial settings where results mattered more than titles. For nearly five of those years the whole unit was mine to answer for: P&L, customers, organisation, result.

My style is direct and pragmatic, grounded in the daily work — whether I’m operating at executive level, running a site, or standing next to line managers and operators. What owners keep me for is consistent: clarity when things are uncertain, structure when they’re under pressure, and agreement on what has to happen next, on the floor and in the boardroom alike.

How I work in practice

I’m brought in when an organisation needs operational leadership now — embedded, hands-on, and answerable for what gets delivered. The work runs from interim executive roles to shorter mandate-driven assignments, but the position is the same: close to the organisation, alongside the management team, the line leaders and the operators, until execution holds and the leadership owns it.

Interim mandates across operations and industrial leadership
Hands-on operational leadership in complex industrial environments
Advisory and board-level support directly linked to execution

Typical mandates I’m brought into

Rapid stabilisation of underperforming sites — delivery, output, governance
Operational excellence (OpEx) — production systems, lean programmes and daily management that holds
Industrial scale-ups and production ramp-ups under time pressure
Operational restructurings and leadership realignments
Factory transfers, consolidations and site-critical transitions
Establishing operating rhythm and leadership cadence
Structured handover and capability transfer to permanent leadership

Restructuring, from every seat

I have sat in every chair around this decision.

Most people who advise on a closure have seen it from one side. I have worked it from four: the head office, the plant floor, the boardroom, and the receiving end of the decision.

From the head office

I owned a global key account’s delivery straight through a factory closure — moved their dedicated line and restarted it so the customer never felt it.

From the plant floor

I led the full closure of a 150-person site: technical execution, union negotiations alongside the CEO and HR, and production moved to five factories in four countries with every customer kept supplied. My own future stayed unclear for eighteen months. I delivered anyway.

From the boardroom

I built the business case, calculated the profitability and presented the closure decision to the board — a board I sat on. Then I negotiated the packages with the union and handed over a finished plan.

From the receiving end

And once, the axe fell on me: the headquarters I worked at was wound down, and my role went with it. I know exactly what waits on the other side of the decision. That is why I do this work with dignity.

A move is physical

I followed the machines all the way.

A transfer is not a slide in a deck. Before anything moved, I spent months inside the factory being closed — transferring the know-how, training the receiving crews, and building the buffer stock that would keep customers supplied while the lines were down.

Prepared for months inside the closing plant: competence transfer, hands-on training, buffer stock to cover the gap.
Ran the physical move of the machines themselves, not just the plan for it.
Stood in each receiving factory before the machines arrived, so the floor was ready when they landed.
Started each line up with the local team and stayed three to six weeks — until output, quality and safety were back to where they had been before the move.

A factory move needs the boardroom and the machine at the same time. I have never accepted the distance between them.

Where I started

The roots are on the floor.

I started as a process engineer on the gluing and converting lines, close enough to the machines to know how they actually behave. From there I took ownership of the site’s production system and ran it with an operational-excellence team.

We ran a Toyota-inspired way of working as a daily system, not a project with a start and an end. I passed the 105-hour Lean Expert examination and worked end to end across the supply chain — from raw board to the finished pack. I led it as a dedicated function before I carried it into a full P&L. Building the discipline and answering for its results are two different mandates, and I have held both.

The executive tone is credible because the roots are on the floor.

Owners & boards

I represent the owner’s interests — inside the operation.

As an owner or board member, you cannot stand in the plant every day. I do it for you: strategy turns into daily execution, pace and accountability stay in place, and you get the report without a filter.

As a Certified Board Member (Styrelseakademien), I move freely between the floor, the management team and the boardroom. Decisions get anchored where they must be executed — and execution is followed up where it shows.

Credentials

MSc, Industrial Engineering & Management

Linköping University, Sweden

Certified Board Member

Styrelseakademien (Swedish Academy of Board Directors)

Lean Expert, Schneider Electric

Grenoble 2013 — 105 hours of formal training and project defence

Patent co-inventor

EP2744716 (Nicorette child-resistant packaging) — European Carton Excellence Award 2013

Awards & patents

Work that is still on the shelf.

A granted patent, three regions

I am co-inventor on a granted patent for a child-resistant pharmaceutical pack: EP2744716, with parallel grants in the US and Canada. The invention was the smaller part. This pack could not be made on standard machinery: I led its industrialisation from prototype to qualified serial production for the US launch, taking several machine suppliers beyond what their equipment had done before, until the new solutions ran as one line.

Europe’s top carton award, 2013

That pack won the European carton industry’s leading award in its pharmaceutical category in 2013. More than thirteen years later, it is still on pharmacy shelves in the United States.

Track record

A career built in demanding operations

Advancement has consistently arrived during high-stakes conditions — rapid growth, transfer and closure, industrialisation under pressure.

2022–Present · LeadOps Advisory
Founder — interim leadership, board work & expert calls

My own interim and advisory practice, delivering operations leadership, turnarounds, transformation and board work to owners, investors and portfolio companies in Sweden and internationally. The Beyond Gravity mandate below was delivered through LeadOps. It is the engagement I can name, because the people I answered to there went on record. The rest of the practice follows the norm of this work: mandates under NDA, and expert calls that are never listed anywhere. Discretion is part of what my clients buy, so sector and scale is something I share in a call.
2024–2025 · Beyond Gravity
Interim COO — aerospace serial production

Space-grade component manufacturing in Linköping, at the hardest point of its industrialisation: the move from project-based, one-off production to serial manufacturing, with customer launch dates already committed while the factory was still taking shape. Came in as Head of Operations and was promoted to COO in four months, on results. Built the production function through the ramp-up — 60+ recruited in direct competition with the region’s biggest aerospace employer — and put the operating structure in place that serial production demands, with delivery running throughout. The ramp served a major American space-industry customer, with weekly programme reviews held directly with their team in the US.
2021 · Schneider Electric, Stockholm
Special Project Director — Nordic transition mandate

A one-year, group-level transition mandate in Schneider Electric’s Nordic organisation — the last chapter inside the group before founding LeadOps.
2016–2021 · ELKO / Schneider Electric, Norway
Plant & Distribution Center Director — full P&L, board member

A mature, high-volume plant for electrical installation products — automated lines, injection moulding, serial assembly — together with the distribution centre serving the Nordic market. One unit, run as one business: production, distribution and customer fulfilment on the same P&L. Ran it to a corporate-minimum +7% productivity per year and lifted delivery performance from 90% to over 97%, held over time. Sat on the company’s board for four years alongside the role, and led this Norwegian site as a Swede for four years, in the shared Scandinavian working language. Later prepared and negotiated the site’s strategic consolidation as both Board Director and Plant Director.
2012–2016 · Schneider Electric / Thorsman, Nyköping
Operations & OPEX Manager · Transfer Project Général

Electrical installation products in a technically advanced plant — injection moulding, extrusion and assembly, from custom-made devices to mass production. Industrial Performance Leader, then Engineering (OPEX) Manager — the site’s operational excellence manager — and from 2015 Operations Manager, holding all three through the transition. Owned the ~18-month closure and cross-European transfer of the 150+-person site to five receiving factories in four countries: union negotiations, transfer planning and production re-starts, with customer deliveries protected throughout. Earlier in the role, the site’s ‘Pre-Wired’ improvement programme — which I authored and co-led — won Schneider Electric’s Retail Cluster Trophy in 2015.
2009–2012 · A&R Carton
Group operational excellence & process engineering

HQ-level operational excellence across a 12-factory, 7-country network, with customer-line work for brands including Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Heineken and Mondelez — the business-continuity plan for a key Nestlé-supplying plant I presented at Nestlé’s head office in France. For Johnson & Johnson’s Nicorette, led the child-resistant pack from prototype to qualified serial production for its US launch — co-inventor on the patent, and the pack won Europe’s top carton award in 2013.

An executive operator, brought in when execution cannot fail