Role Summary

This seriously exciting chilled business is now turning over £1.3m after just two years of being in business. As a result, they need a Head of Manufacturing Operations to come in and take responsibility of all manufacturing so they can triple their production in the next year. Reporting into the Operations Manager (Co-Founder), this is an opportunity to advise a business on strategic direction to support ambitious plans for the business. You will be measured on customer delivery performance and would manage everything from the facility to inbound material management.

Role specifics

Operations

• Be responsible for all manufacturing and operational matters including production planning, within the business ensuring that all activities are performed to agreed targets.
• Drive improvement initiatives within the function to ensure maximisation of all opportunities specific to efficiencies and value engineering which will ultimately drive margin improvement.
• In direct support of the Operations Director, ensure that all inbound materials are secured at the most favourable price and delivered to agreed costs, quality standards and service levels.
• Responsible for all inbound, storage and outbound material management including trading partnerships with any third-party providers.
• Ensure that an appropriate Key Performance Indicator suite is implemented aligned to agreed targets.
• Be the main conduit and contact for all customer facing supply chain matters, ensuring that all customer requirements from a supply chain and operational aspect are captured, communicated and delivered.

Team

• Responsible for team development and creating a culture of continuous improvement.
• Ensure that each key member of the team have personal development plans in place with key metrics aligned to both this role and overall business strategy.
• Providing the opportunity for team empowerment and the ownership of quality, cost and efficiencies throughout the team.

Key targets

• Tripling production run rates over the next 12 months
• Support and align production and supply chain activities to ensure that the required margin improvement is achieved.
• Take responsibility for the outsourcing of any and all co-packing arrangements ensuring that all such activity maintains margin labels and drives subsequent improvement.

Future development

• Recommend, and subsequently deliver, an agreed functional supply chain strategy that aligns to and supports the existing 2019-2021 plan for the business.
• Be actively involved in the development of the subsequent 3-year plan, in order to help deliver the required growth and profit targets for the business.

Success measures

• Performance
  • Customer delivery - On time in full
  • Labour and line efficiency
  • Maximisation and maintenance of product and delivery quality standards throughout the supply chain
  • Reduction in waste
• Cost
  • Manufacturing
  • Supply chain including material price variance
  • Stock levels versus budget
  • Third party providers versus budget
  • Delivery of projects on time and to budget
• General
  • Staff engagement
  • Your levels of excitement and self-motivation / engagement within the role

The person

• Food Science, Engineering or Manufacturing degree preferable but not essential.
• Experience in leadership of manufacturing, having come through the ranks of manufacturing, engineering or ideally both.
• A change agent, somebody that can both drive and adapt to change quickly
• High level of understanding of the needs in relation to new product development.
• Understanding of what “best practice” operational and supply chain management looks like and how to get there.
• Experience working in a highly entrepreneurial environment, for example: rapid growth, new product manufacturing process design, creating things from scratch…
• Experience of working with retailers.
• Able to demonstrate true industry gravitas both internally and externally.
• A team player who supports and develops all those around him.
• Somebody who just loves what they do…