VP, Operations

The VP, Operations is accountable for leading and planning all activities of operations including purchasing and procurement, production, maintenance and engineering for the company. Directs and coordinates activities of departments to meet operations goals and objectives at or above budget. Reviews and analyzes activities, outputs, costs and forecast data to identify opportunities for continuous improvement, new work processes and new equipment resources to ensure profitable growth and consistent product quality. This position is accountable for improving overall competitiveness and delivering best quality product on time, as promised. This position reports to the CEO and serves on the executive leadership team.

Essential Functions:

• Collaborates in the long-term planning and overall strategy of the organization. Develops a risk management strategy in dairy purchasing and procurement. Provides the capital expenditure plan and associated performance plan for the three-year in accordance with the company strategy and in compliance with the company financial objectives.
• Participates in preparing the budget. This includes analyzing operations data and defining the operations goals and objectives for the budget. Supplies the financial department with accurate data for the construction of the budget, translates goals and objectives at the department level. Monitors the attainment of objectives and drives required actions if problems. Submits all capital projects and manages the overall capital cash out, in line with the annual free cash flow objective.
• Develops and directs plans for purchasing and production performance, equipment maintenance and capital project execution at 3 factories: Fleur de Lait East, Fleur de Lait West and Kolb Lena. Develops and implements required changes in the Industrial Organization to be able to ensure best direct costs for products.
• Collaborate with Quality Director to improve Quality ownership on the plant floor.
• Successfully industrialize and launch all innovations to support Savencia Cheese Marketing and Sales strategy in all SBUs.
• Contributes to and executes a commodity risk management strategy based on SC USA exposure to commodity price volatility (impact on SC USA margins and financial performance). Ensures risk management policy and SOPs proper execution and accounting treatment. Manages cost of dairy ingredients and achieves purchasing performance plan on cream multiples, cream roll-forward, milk balancing, outlets for whey and packaging cost reduction plan.
• Ensures on time delivery of raw material, ingredients, and packaging procurement and delivery to all 3 facilities, to meet the production planning
• Ensures that the plants are in compliance with all regulations and the Savencia Group best practices in purchasing, team management, people safety, cost of goods, plant maintenance, capital project management and product safety and quality.
• Guarantees the proper technology and capacity in each facility to manufacture the necessary volume of products and to successfully industrialize innovations
• Leads and fosters trusting relationships throughout plant management and supervision to ensure a work culture that effectively holds people accountable for work standards and behaviors and helps employees deliver on goals and objectives.
• Regularly communicates in writing, via reports, in person, and in meetings in a clear logical style that incorporates the business rationale when reporting actual performance, explaining decisions and actions to the executive team or employees at all levels.

Supervisory Responsibility

This position manages all employees of the Operations, Materials Management, Engineering, Environmental, Health & Safety, and Maintenance departments and is responsible for the performance management and hiring of the employees within those departments.

Travel

This position requires frequent travel. Most travel is outside the local area and overnight. Some of the travel is international.

Competencies

• Strategy
• communication
• Organization and Planning
• Project Management
• Economics and Business Management
• Team Management
  

Required Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering or a related field
• Six to seven years of related experience in a food manufacturing environment
• Highly effective communicator
• Strategic thinker who is able to execute on strategic plans
• KPI and Financial data driven

Preferred Education and Experience

• MBA or master’s degree in a related field
• Experience manufacturing dairy products
• Bi-lingual (English/Spanish or English/French)