Manager, Production Food Manufacturer

Position Summary 

The Manager, Production Operations is the plant-wide execution leader responsible for driving consistent, disciplined production performance across all shifts, lines, and production areas. This role ensures that production standards, SOPs, and operating rhythms are executed with excellence every day. This role translates production plans into reliable execution, reinforces accountability, and ensures performance gaps are identified, understood, and addressed. This role plays a critical part in advancing Grandma Quality by ensuring work is performed with craftsmanship, consistency, and pride, while supporting benchmarking, best-practice sharing, and continuous improvement across the plant. 

Key Responsibilities 

• Serve as the owner of production execution across the entire facility, ensuring safe, compliant, and efficient operations across all shifts and production areas. 

• Own production scheduling execution, including master schedules, line sequencing, capacity alignment, and short-interval adjustments required to deliver plan attainment. 

• Translate demand and production plans into executable schedules and staffing models, adjusting in real time based on downtime, labor availability, material constraints, and volume changes. 

• Ensure production schedules are executed safely, efficiently, and consistently, with strong focus on attainment, throughput, efficiency, and labor alignment. 

• Lead and develop Production Managers, holding them accountable for consistent execution, frontline people leadership, and results. 

• Serve as a visible production leader across all shifts, reinforcing expectations for safety, quality, accountability, and respectful leadership. 

• Establish, reinforce, and continuously improve production standards, SOP execution, and operating rhythms across all lines and shifts. 

• Reinforce consistent application of standard work, daily operating best practices, and performance expectations across the plant. 

• Own and manage plant-level production KPIs and dashboards, ensuring performance visibility, data accuracy, and timely communication. 

• Partner with the Regional Manager, Production Operations to monitor performance trends, identify gaps, and drive corrective actions and sustained improvements. 

• Analyze production performance and drive root cause analysis for attainment misses, downtime, inefficiencies, and variability. 

• Partner with Planning to provide accurate line capability inputs (rates, speeds, efficiencies, constraints) to support realistic and executable production plans. 

• Own changeover execution, ensuring changeovers are performed efficiently, safely, and in accordance with established standards and schedules. 

• Collaborate with Production Managers and CI/OpEx partners to identify, test, standardize, and scale best practices across production areas. 

• Drive and support continuous improvement initiatives focused on throughput, labor efficiency, downtime reduction, and schedule adherence. 

• Lead cross-shift and cross-line alignment, ensuring consistent messaging, expectations, and execution. 

• Serve as the primary escalation point for cross-shift, cross-line, or complex execution challenges, ensuring rapid resolution and alignment. 

• Act as the first escalation point for significant employee relations, performance, or conduct issues that cannot be resolved at the Production Manager level, partnering with People Operations as appropriate. 

• Ensure consistent application of company policies, performance standards, and disciplinary practices across production teams. 

• Reinforce Mama’s values by setting clear expectations for leadership behavior and addressing misalignment promptly. 

• Promote a strong, inclusive, and accountable production culture where employees feel supported, heard, and held to high standards. 

• Support change management efforts related to new processes, equipment, schedules, products, or organizational changes within production. 

• Identify leadership gaps, training needs, and succession opportunities within the Production Manager group.