Position Summary

The Plant Manager will have full operational responsibility for the performance of a high-volume Ready-to-Eat (RTE) meat manufacturing facility, with accountability for safety, food safety, quality, production, customer service, labor, cost, yield, maintenance, sanitation and overall plant profitability.

The successful candidate will be a strong operational leader with significant experience in RTE meat, poultry, protein or other high-care food manufacturing environments.

This individual will lead a culture in which food safety and employee safety come first, while simultaneously driving operational excellence, productivity, yield improvement, labor efficiency, equipment reliability and customer service.

The Plant Manager will be expected to lead from the floor, establish clear standards, develop a high-performing management team and create an environment of accountability and continuous improvement.

Core Accountabilities

1. Overall Plant Leadership

• Provide overall leadership and direction for the manufacturing facility.
• Establish clear operational priorities and performance expectations.
• Develop and execute the site's annual operating plan.
• Ensure the plant consistently achieves production, quality, service, safety and financial targets.
• Establish a strong daily management operating system.
• Maintain a highly visible leadership presence on the production floor.
• Build a culture of accountability, ownership and continuous improvement.
• Ensure effective communication between all departments and shifts.
• Lead daily, weekly and monthly performance reviews.
• Escalate significant operational, quality, food-safety or personnel issues appropriately.

The Plant Manager will be accountable for ensuring that the plant operates as one integrated business, rather than as separate Production, Quality, Maintenance, Sanitation and Warehouse functions.

2. Food Safety & Quality

Food safety is the Plant Manager's number-one operational priority.

The successful candidate will:

• Ensure full compliance with company food-safety standards and applicable USDA/FSIS requirements.
• Partner closely with the Quality and Food Safety leadership team.
• Ensure HACCP systems and prerequisite programs are effectively implemented.
• Maintain a strong food-safety culture throughout the organization.
• Ensure employees understand that food safety takes precedence over production output.
• Establish rigorous controls around RTE/high-care manufacturing areas.
• Ensure appropriate environmental monitoring and corrective-action processes are followed.
• Maintain strict control of allergen management.
• Ensure foreign-material prevention programs are effective.
• Ensure appropriate product temperature controls are maintained.
• Ensure product handling, storage and transportation requirements are met.
• Lead effective investigation and resolution of quality and food-safety deviations.
• Ensure corrective and preventive actions are implemented and sustained.
• Participate in customer, regulatory and third-party audits.
• Ensure the facility remains inspection-ready at all times.

RTE / Listeria Control

The Plant Manager must understand the particular risks associated with post-lethality-exposed RTE products.

Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining strong hygienic zoning and personnel-flow controls.
• Ensuring effective sanitation practices within high-care areas.
• Supporting environmental monitoring programs.
• Ensuring sanitation failures and environmental positives receive immediate and effective investigation.
• Preventing cross-contamination between raw and cooked/RTE areas.
• Ensuring equipment, infrastructure and employee practices support effective hygienic control.
• Working closely with Food Safety and Sanitation to identify and eliminate recurring environmental issues.

FSIS guidance emphasizes that sanitation is fundamental to controlling Listeria monocytogenes in RTE establishments, particularly where products are exposed after the lethality step.

3. Production & Operational Performance

• Own the site's production performance.
• Ensure production plans are delivered safely, efficiently and on time.
• Optimize production scheduling and labor utilization.
• Ensure production lines achieve planned rates and volumes.
• Drive improvements in OEE.
• Reduce downtime, changeover losses and production inefficiencies.
• Improve line balance and production flow.
• Establish effective daily production management.
• Identify and eliminate bottlenecks.
• Ensure production standards are clearly defined and followed.
• Ensure accurate production reporting.
• Work closely with Supply Chain and Planning to meet customer requirements.

Key areas of responsibility may include:

• Cooking
• Chilling
• Smoking
• Slicing
• Dicing
• Grinding
• Mixing
• Forming
• Stuffing
• Thermal processing
• Packaging
• Labeling
• Metal detection/X-ray
• Case packing
• Palletizing
• Cold storage

4. Yield & Productivity

The Plant Manager will have significant accountability for manufacturing cost and product yield.

Responsibilities include:

• Establish and manage yield targets by product and process.
• Identify sources of yield loss.
• Reduce giveaway and rework.
• Improve raw-material utilization.
• Control trim and process losses.
• Improve labor productivity.
• Reduce overtime.
• Improve line speeds without compromising food safety or quality.
• Optimize changeovers.
• Reduce waste and scrap.
• Establish accountability for yield at each stage of the process.
• Use data to identify and eliminate chronic sources of loss.

The expectation is that the Plant Manager understands the relationship between:

Yield → Labor → Throughput → OEE → Cost per Pound → Gross Margin.

5. Maintenance & Reliability

Work closely with the Director/Manager of Engineering & Maintenance to ensure maximum equipment reliability.

• Establish clear equipment reliability expectations.
• Ensure preventive maintenance is completed effectively.
• Reduce unplanned downtime.
• Prioritize chronic equipment failures.
• Ensure production and maintenance teams work collaboratively.
• Support capital investment decisions.
• Ensure equipment is maintained to appropriate food-safety and hygienic standards.
• Ensure maintenance work does not compromise product safety.
• Ensure appropriate LOTO practices are followed.

The Plant Manager should understand that maintenance reliability is an operational issue, not simply a maintenance-department issue.

OSHA identifies lockout/tagout and machine guarding as important controls in meat-processing environments, particularly where employees work around powered machinery.

6. Sanitation

Provide strong leadership and accountability for sanitation performance.

• Establish sanitation standards appropriate for RTE manufacturing.
• Ensure sanitation programs are executed consistently.
• Monitor pre-operational inspection performance.
• Reduce recurring sanitation failures.
• Partner with Food Safety to investigate environmental positives.
• Ensure sanitation crews are appropriately trained.
• Optimize sanitation labor and chemical usage.
• Ensure equipment is designed and maintained to facilitate effective sanitation.
• Establish clear accountability for sanitation KPIs.
• Ensure sanitation performance is never sacrificed to achieve production targets.

The Plant Manager should establish a culture in which "clean to produce" is non-negotiable.

7. Employee Safety

Create and maintain a zero-compromise safety culture.

Responsibilities include:

• Own overall plant safety performance.
• Ensure OSHA requirements and company safety standards are followed.
• Lead regular safety meetings and management reviews.
• Establish strong near-miss reporting and corrective-action processes.
• Reduce recordable and lost-time injuries.
• Drive ergonomic improvements.
• Ensure appropriate PPE usage.
• Ensure machine guarding is maintained.
• Ensure LOTO programs are effective.
• Address slips, trips and falls.
• Manage chemical safety.
• Support ammonia/refrigeration safety programs where applicable.
• Ensure emergency-response procedures are effective.

OSHA specifically identifies ergonomics, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, chemicals, ammonia refrigeration, machine guarding and hazardous energy as significant concerns within meat-processing operations.

8. People Leadership

Build a high-performing plant leadership team.

Directly or indirectly lead:

• Production
• Operations
• Quality/Food Safety
• Maintenance
• Engineering
• Sanitation
• Warehouse
• Shipping/Receiving
• Continuous Improvement
• HR

Responsibilities include:

• Recruit and retain strong plant leadership.
• Establish clear accountability for every leadership position.
• Develop supervisors and frontline managers.
• Establish succession plans.
• Improve employee engagement and retention.
• Build effective hourly workforce-management practices.
• Develop training programs.
• Establish clear performance expectations.
• Address performance issues quickly and fairly.
• Build a culture of respect, accountability and teamwork.
• Ensure effective communication across all shifts.

The successful candidate should be an exceptional people leader, capable of managing both experienced professionals and a large hourly manufacturing workforce.

9. Labor & Workforce Management

• Develop appropriate staffing models.
• Optimize direct and indirect labor.
• Control overtime.
• Improve attendance and retention.
• Work closely with HR on recruitment and workforce planning.
• Establish effective onboarding and training.
• Improve workforce flexibility through cross-training.
• Ensure appropriate staffing for multiple shifts.
• Develop frontline leadership capability.
• Where applicable, manage effectively within a unionized environment and maintain constructive labor relations.

10. Continuous Improvement

Lead a structured operational-excellence program.

The Plant Manager will be expected to establish a culture of continuous improvement using appropriate tools such as:

• Lean Manufacturing
• TPM
• Six Sigma
• 5S
• Kaizen
• Root Cause Analysis
• SMED
• Standard Work
• Visual Management
• Daily Management Systems

Priorities should include:

• Eliminating waste
• Improving throughput
• Reducing downtime
• Improving labor productivity
• Improving yield
• Reducing changeover time
• Improving quality
• Reducing rework
• Improving sanitation effectiveness