Hiring Production and Fabrication LEADERSHIP
Fabrication Manager. Production Manager. Director of Production. VP of Fabrication. The titles are inconsistent across the industry. Here is how to read them and hire right.
No function in the exhibit industry has more title variation than production and fabrication. A Production Manager at one exhibit house runs the entire operation. At another it is a mid-level scheduling role. A Fabrication Manager at a 10-person shop may be the most senior person on the floor. At a 150-person operation the same title sits two levels below the VP.
This is not carelessness. It is history. Exhibit houses evolved from custom fabrication shops, scenic builders, rental and display operations, and production houses. Each origin story left its own title conventions behind. The result is an industry where the same words mean different things depending on where a company came from and how it grew.
For anyone hiring into this function, or evaluating candidates who come from other companies, that inconsistency is a real problem. The right framework is not to trust the title. It is to understand what the person actually owned and map that against what your company actually needs.
Here is how to do that.
The Typical Progression: How the Levels Stack
In a structured mid-size to large exhibit house, the production and fabrication leadership ladder generally looks like this:
• Shop Supervisor
• Fabrication Manager
• Production Manager
• Director of Production or Director of Fabrication
• VP of Production or VP of Fabrication
Each level carries a different scope, a different set of accountabilities, and a different relationship to the rest of the business. Understanding those differences is the starting point for any search in this function.
Shop Supervisor: Owning the Floor
The Shop Supervisor is a hands-on leadership role. They are managing the daily work of the fabrication team, assigning tasks, maintaining quality standards, and keeping production moving through the shop. This is a floor-level role. The Shop Supervisor is in it, not above it.
At smaller exhibit houses this role may carry the Fabrication Manager title. At larger operations it is a distinct rung below Fabrication Manager. The distinction matters when you are hiring because a candidate who has only held a Shop Supervisor role, regardless of title, may not be ready to own the broader responsibilities of a true Fabrication Manager.
Fabrication Manager: Shop Floor Leadership
The Fabrication Manager owns the fabrication function. In most exhibit houses that means carpentry, scenic construction, metal fabrication, CNC, paint, and the labor that drives all of it. They are responsible for quality, throughput, shop scheduling within fabrication, and the day-to-day management of the build team.
This is primarily a departmental role. The Fabrication Manager is deep in the physical build. They know materials, methods, and the capabilities of their team. They understand what is realistic when production is promising timelines, and they can push back credibly when something is not.
What the Fabrication Manager typically does not own is the broader production workflow beyond their department. Vendor management, logistics coordination, install readiness, and the PM-to-shop interface usually sit with someone else, either a Production Manager above them or an operations leader.
At smaller exhibit firms, that distinction collapses. A Fabrication Manager running a 20-person shop at a founder-led regional builder may effectively own everything. When you are evaluating that candidate for a role at a larger operation, the question is whether their experience scales. Have they managed across departments or only within fabrication? Have they dealt with the complexity of multiple concurrent jobs at different stages, or have they run a more linear shop?
Production Manager: Broader Operational Ownership
The Production Manager sits above the Fabrication Manager in most structured exhibit house operations and owns a wider scope. Where the Fabrication Manager owns the build, the Production Manager owns the production lifecycle.
That means cross-department coordination, production scheduling across all active jobs, the interface between the PM team and the shop, vendor and subcontractor management, logistics coordination, and install readiness. The Production Manager is not just watching what happens inside fabrication. They are managing everything that has to happen for a job to make it from kickoff to the show floor.
In a busy exhibit house, the Production Manager is the person who knows the status of every active job, can identify a scheduling conflict before it becomes a crisis, and has the relationships across the organization to solve problems that cross departmental lines. They are an operational coordinator as much as they are a fabrication leader.
At smaller companies, Production Manager and Fabrication Manager are often peer titles or used interchangeably. At a sub-15 million dollar exhibit builder or a founder-led shop, the person holding either title may be doing everything described above. When evaluating these candidates, scope matters more than title. What did they actually own, and how does that compare to what your operation requires?
Director of Fabrication vs. Director of Production: Where the Distinction Gets Meaningful
At the Director level, the difference between Fabrication and Production titles starts to signal something real about scope, even if individual companies use them inconsistently.
A Director of Fabrication title generally signals shop ownership. This person is the senior leader of the physical build operation. They own the fabrication departments, the quality of the work that comes off the floor, labor and throughput, and the standards that define how the company builds. The orientation is manufacturing. The expertise is in the craft and the operation that produces it.
A Director of Production title generally signals broader operational ownership. This person owns fabrication plus logistics, install coordination, scheduling across all production functions, vendor management, and the full production lifecycle from sale to show floor. The orientation is enterprise operational. They are managing a system, not just a department.
If you see a Director of Fabrication candidate, assume senior shop and fabrication leader until proven otherwise. If you see a Director of Production candidate, assume broader operational responsibility. Then verify both by asking what they actually owned.
The places where this breaks down: companies that promoted their best Fabrication Manager to Director without expanding the scope, and companies that gave a Director of Production title to someone who is effectively running fabrication only. Both exist in the market. Both will show up in your search. The title will not tell you which one you are looking at.
VP of Fabrication vs. VP of Production: Executive Scope
At the VP level the distinction becomes the clearest and the most consequential.
A VP of Fabrication is a senior manufacturing executive. They own the physical build operation at the highest level, including shop infrastructure, fabrication leadership, build quality standards, capital equipment, and in many cases the labor strategy for the shop. This is a deep domain expert in a senior seat. Their world is the build.
A VP of Production carries enterprise operational ownership. They are responsible for the entire production execution function, which at a large exhibit house may span multiple facilities, regional I and D teams, a vendor and labor partner network, logistics, and the full production management function. They sit in executive conversations about capacity, margins, and operational growth. They are closer to a COO than a shop leader.
When an exhibit house is searching for a VP of Production, they are usually looking for someone who can own operations at a business level, not just a production level. That requires a candidate who has managed across departments, made decisions that affect the business's financial performance, and can represent operations credibly in leadership conversations. Not every strong Director of Production is ready for that. Not every VP of Fabrication wants it.
Knowing which one you actually need before you start the search saves significant time and prevents an expensive mismatch.
Why Generic Recruiters Get These Searches Wrong
The title inconsistency in this function is exactly where recruiters without industry knowledge fail. A recruiter who does not understand how exhibit houses evolved, how the titles developed differently across different company origins, and what the scope differences actually mean will take titles at face value and match them incorrectly.
They will send a Fabrication Manager who ran a 10-person scenic shop to a Production Manager search at a 200-person operation. They will present a Director of Production who has never managed outside of fabrication for a VP role that requires enterprise operational leadership. The candidate looks right on paper. The scope is wrong.
That is not a candidate problem. It is a search problem. And it is a problem that compounds when the wrong hire is in place for six months before everyone realizes it.
We have been running production and fabrication searches at exhibit houses for over 25 years. We know how to read a title from any company structure, ask the right questions to understand what the person actually owned, and match that against what the search actually requires. That distinction is what our clients hire us for.
What Strong Candidates Look Like at Every Level
Regardless of title, the candidates who perform best in production and fabrication leadership roles at exhibit houses share a few consistent qualities:
• They have worked in this industry. General manufacturing or construction experience transfers partially. The trade show calendar, compressed timelines, the multi-job environment, and the on-site execution demands are specific to this world. Candidates who have lived it perform faster and make fewer expensive mistakes.
• They are visible and credible with the people doing the work. The best production and fabrication leaders at every level are not managing from a desk. They have the respect of the shop because they have earned it.
• They communicate across the organization without being asked. Whether it is a Fabrication Manager flagging a material delay or a VP of Production presenting capacity constraints to the executive team, the best candidates in this function get ahead of problems before they land on someone else's desk.
• They are calm when the shop is not. This industry puts production under real and constant pressure. The person who sets the tone for how the team responds when things go wrong shapes the entire culture of the operation.
How EXHIBITRECRUITER | EVENTRECRUITER Handles These Searches
Production and fabrication searches are among the most specialized we run. The candidate pool of people who have the right industry background, the right scope of experience, and the right level of leadership is narrow. The best ones are not looking. They are running shops, managing teams, and too busy to respond to a generic recruiter message.
We know who they are. We have placed production and fabrication leaders at exhibit houses of every size, from regional builders to the largest operations in the country. When a client brings us a search in this function, we start with The Hiring Signal to make sure we are clear on what the role actually requires before we start recruiting. That step is especially important here, where the title alone will not tell either of us what we need to know.
exhibitrecruiter.com/the-hiring-signal
Cal Cook
EXHIBITRECRUITER | EVENTRECRUITER
Specialized recruiting for exhibit houses and experiential event agencies.
