Position Summary

The Maintenance Manager is responsible for leading the maintenance function within a high-volume live-harvest beef processing facility, ensuring that all production, slaughter, processing, refrigeration, utilities, wastewater and facility assets operate safely, reliably and efficiently.

The role is responsible for developing a proactive maintenance culture that maximizes equipment uptime, minimizes unplanned downtime and supports the facility's production, food-safety, animal-welfare and financial objectives.

The successful candidate will be a highly experienced maintenance leader with a strong background in beef slaughter, meat processing, poultry, food manufacturing or another high-volume industrial processing environment.

This is a hands-on leadership position. The Maintenance Manager is expected to be highly visible on the plant floor, understand the equipment and processes, develop the maintenance team and work closely with Production, Engineering, Quality, Food Safety, Sanitation, EHS and USDA personnel.

The role requires an individual who understands that in a slaughter facility, equipment reliability is directly connected to animal welfare, employee safety, product quality, food safety and production performance.

Key Responsibilities

1. Maintenance Leadership

• Lead the day-to-day maintenance function for the entire facility.
• Establish clear maintenance standards, priorities and performance expectations.
• Manage mechanical, electrical, controls and utility maintenance activities.
• Ensure maintenance resources are appropriately deployed across shifts.
• Develop a proactive rather than reactive maintenance culture.
• Ensure maintenance activities are planned, scheduled and completed effectively.
• Provide technical leadership during major breakdowns.
• Ensure appropriate escalation procedures are in place for critical equipment failures.
• Maintain strong communication between Maintenance and Production.
• Establish accountability for maintenance performance across all shifts.

2. Equipment Reliability

Develop and execute a comprehensive reliability strategy covering critical assets throughout the facility.

This includes equipment associated with:

Live Receiving & Animal Handling

• Livestock receiving systems
• Holding pens
• Gates and restraint systems
• Chutes
• Animal-handling equipment
• Stunning systems
• Hoists and lifting equipment

Slaughter & Dressing

• Hide pullers
• Hide processing equipment
• Head processing
• Bung dropping/tying systems
• Evisceration equipment
• Carcass rail systems
• Conveyors
• Saws
• Splitting equipment
• Inspection equipment
• Carcass washing systems
• Sterilizers
• Knife and tool sterilization systems
• Offal handling
• Rendering/by-product systems

Chilling & Refrigeration

• Carcass chillers
• Refrigeration systems
• Ammonia refrigeration, where applicable
• Evaporators
• Compressors
• Condensers
• Pumps
• Cooling systems
• Temperature-control systems

Further Processing / Fabrication

Where applicable:

• Fabrication lines
• Cutting equipment
• Grinders
• Mixers
• Vacuum systems
• Packaging equipment
• Conveyors
• Metal detection
• X-ray systems

Utilities

• Boilers
• Steam systems
• Compressed air
• Electrical distribution
• Water systems
• Wastewater systems
• HVAC
• Natural gas
• Backup generators
• Fire protection systems

3. Preventive & Predictive Maintenance

• Develop and maintain an effective preventive-maintenance program.
• Establish maintenance frequencies based on equipment criticality and OEM recommendations.
• Increase planned maintenance as a percentage of total maintenance activity.
• Introduce predictive maintenance techniques where appropriate.
• Utilize vibration analysis, thermography, oil analysis and other condition-monitoring technologies where beneficial.
• Identify equipment showing signs of deterioration before failure occurs.
• Establish critical equipment inspection routines.
• Ensure maintenance tasks are completed correctly and documented.
• Continuously review PM effectiveness and eliminate unnecessary or ineffective PM tasks.

Maintenance Philosophy

The objective should be to move the facility from:

Breakdown → Repair → Restart

to:

Inspect → Predict → Plan → Maintain → Verify → Improve

4. Breakdown Management

• Lead the response to significant equipment breakdowns.
• Establish clear priorities based on safety, animal welfare, food safety and production impact.
• Ensure critical breakdowns receive immediate technical support.
• Conduct root-cause analysis following major failures.
• Identify permanent corrective actions rather than repeatedly repairing the same failure.
• Track repeat breakdowns and chronic equipment problems.
• Establish downtime reporting by asset and production area.
• Communicate expected recovery times to Production leadership.
• Ensure spare parts and technical resources are available for critical equipment.

5. Animal Welfare

The Maintenance Manager will have an important role in ensuring that equipment used in live-animal handling and slaughter operates reliably and safely.

Responsibilities include:

• Ensure animal-handling and restraint equipment operates correctly.
• Maintain stunning equipment to appropriate standards.
• Minimize equipment-related delays or failures affecting live animals.
• Ensure gates, conveyors, hoists, restraints and handling systems remain reliable.
• Respond immediately to equipment failures that could compromise animal welfare.
• Work closely with Operations and Animal Welfare personnel to identify recurring equipment issues.
• Ensure maintenance modifications do not negatively impact animal handling or welfare.

Animal welfare must be treated as a critical maintenance priority, alongside employee safety and food safety.

6. Food Safety & Sanitation

• Ensure maintenance activities support food-safety requirements.
• Ensure equipment is maintained in a sanitary condition.
• Ensure repairs and modifications do not create contamination, foreign-material or hygienic-design risks.
• Coordinate maintenance activities with Sanitation.
• Ensure appropriate controls are in place when maintenance is performed in production areas.
• Prevent lubricants, chemicals, metal fragments and other maintenance materials from becoming product hazards.
• Ensure food-grade lubricants are used where required.
• Ensure temporary repairs are appropriately controlled and permanently corrected.
• Participate in food-safety investigations involving equipment or facility conditions.
• Support USDA and customer audits.

Maintenance must understand that equipment condition can directly affect food safety.

7. USDA / Regulatory Support

• Maintain strong working relationships with USDA inspection personnel.
• Respond promptly to equipment-related regulatory concerns.
• Ensure equipment and facility conditions support sanitary operations.
• Support corrective actions arising from regulatory observations.
• Ensure repairs and engineering changes are appropriately controlled.
• Maintain documentation required for maintenance, equipment and regulatory purposes.
• Partner with Quality and Food Safety during inspections and audits.

USDA regulations establish requirements around official establishments, facilities, sanitary accommodations and inspection operations; therefore maintenance plays an important supporting role in keeping the plant inspection-ready.

8. Safety & Hazardous Energy

Safety is a core responsibility of the Maintenance Manager.

• Establish and enforce a robust Lockout/Tagout program.
• Ensure maintenance employees are trained and authorized appropriately.
• Conduct periodic LOTO audits.
• Ensure machine guards are installed and maintained.
• Prevent unauthorized bypassing of safety devices.
• Ensure electrical work is performed safely.
• Establish safe procedures for mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, thermal, chemical and electrical energy.
• Ensure contractors follow site safety requirements.
• Investigate maintenance-related incidents and near misses.
• Establish safe work procedures for confined spaces, hot work and work at height where applicable.

OSHA's hazardous-energy standard requires an energy-control program covering procedures, employee training and periodic inspections for applicable servicing and maintenance activities.

OSHA also emphasizes machine guarding to protect employees from hazards created by moving machinery, including crushing, amputation and other serious injuries.

9. Electrical & Controls

Provide leadership for the electrical and controls maintenance function.

• Maintain plant electrical systems.
• Support PLC and automation systems.
• Troubleshoot electrical faults.
• Maintain sensors, switches and instrumentation.
• Maintain motor-control systems.
• Support VFDs and control panels.
• Ensure appropriate backup and documentation of PLC programs.
• Develop controls troubleshooting capability within the maintenance team.
• Identify obsolete controls and electrical components.
• Develop replacement strategies for aging systems.

10. Refrigeration & Utilities

Where the facility operates ammonia or other industrial refrigeration systems, the Maintenance Manager will ensure appropriate maintenance, reliability and compliance.

Responsibilities may include:

• Refrigeration compressors
• Ammonia systems
• Evaporators
• Condensers
• Pumps
• Refrigeration controls
• Boilers
• Steam systems
• Compressed air
• Water systems
• Wastewater systems
• HVAC
• Electrical infrastructure

Work closely with EHS and qualified refrigeration personnel to ensure safe operation and appropriate emergency-response procedures.