Senior Consultant, Process Improvement

Senior Consultant, Process Improvement 

Management Systems: Quality, Food Safety, Safety, Environmental 

Independent contractor  |  $100 to $110 per hour  |  Southeast or Mid-Atlantic US  |  About 50% travel 

About the role 

Spinnaker International is hiring a Senior Consultant to work as the second member of a two-person core team on a multiyear process improvement program at a large food and beverage manufacturer. You will work directly with the Engagement Lead every day. You will build the baseline, the cost models, and the analysis that drive the design. You will turn large volumes of plant data, interviews, and documents into clear presentations that executives act on. 

This is a process improvement role first. The subject matter is an enterprise management system covering quality, food safety, safety, and environmental programs certified to ISO and FSSC 22000 standards. We need someone who has done this work inside industry, has implemented these standards before, and now applies that experience as a consultant. 

The role spans all four phases of the program, from the first plant visit to the final confirmation of results. You take direction from the Engagement Lead and work with the Engagement Lead every day, so that what you are working on at any given time aligns with the overall direction of the program. As the program scales to more plants, this role may coordinate additional Spinnaker resources under that same direction. 

The engagement 

The client operates multiple manufacturing plants across several states. Its management system has grown more complex than the business it serves. The program will simplify the system into one risk-based framework, redesign the governance and review processes around it, rationalize the supporting technology, and align every plant to a common operating model. 

The program follows the Spinnaker method: Measure, Design, Implement, Confirm. The first phase establishes a quantified baseline through plant visits and analysis. Design follows. Implementation runs plant by plant with structured change management. 

What you will do 

Measure. Establish the baseline the whole program is built on. 

• Build the enterprise baseline: controlled documents, audit programs, management review, governance, and the platforms that support them. 

• Lead plant-level assessments on site. Observe practice against procedure on the floor, in the lab, and in the control room. Interview operators, supervisors, quality and safety managers, and plant leadership. 

• Build the cost of compliance model in Excel, analyze audit finding patterns, score each plant on a maturity profile, and identify quick wins for the first executive readout. 

Design. Shape the future-state system and the plan to reach it. 

• Design one tiered document hierarchy and write the policies and procedures that anchor it, in language plant teams will follow. 

• Redesign the internal audit program and management review so both are risk-weighted, exception-based, and fed from existing systems. 

• Define platform requirements, support the consolidation decision, and build the training and competency framework. 

Implement and Confirm. Make it real at every plant, then prove it held. 

• Run the pilot plant and then the multi-plant rollout: training, onboarding, change management, and the controlled retirement of duplicate documents and platforms. 

• Track results against the baseline, hand the system to its client owners, and confirm the gain holds. 

• Throughout, draft executive presentations and working papers with the Engagement Lead. Use AI tools daily to analyze, draft, and build. Verify everything they produce. 

Required 

• Hands-on process improvement experience. You have led Lean or Six Sigma projects that changed how a plant or a corporate function works, and you can show the before and after in numbers. A Lean or Six Sigma certification is required. The belt level matters less to us than the results. 

• Seven or more years in food or beverage manufacturing, in quality, food safety, operations, or continuous improvement roles. Industry experience is required. Consulting experience on top of it is a strong plus. 

• You have implemented or led an ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, or FSSC 22000 management system through at least one full certification cycle. 

• You have deployed a management system or a process change across more than one site, and you know what it takes to get plant teams to adopt it. 

• You synthesize. You can take hundreds of documents, dozens of interviews, and a messy data set, build the Excel model behind it, and produce a clear, defensible executive presentation. 

• You already use current AI models such as Claude or ChatGPT in your work and are willing to make them a daily tool. You check their output before anyone else sees it. 

• You are willing to travel about half of your working weeks for two-to-three-day plant visits. 

Preferred 

• Beverage bottling experience: batching, clean-in-place, line changeover, labeling controls, statistical process control. 

• Experience harmonizing procedures and documents after an acquisition or integration. 

• Experience with internal audit program design or management review redesign. 

• Training design and delivery, including onboarding for plant quality and safety roles. 

• Experience defining platform requirements or selecting quality, document, or EHS systems. 

• Working knowledge of the 2026 editions of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and of FSSC 22000 Version 7. 

• Lead auditor training (ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, or FSSC 22000) or PCQI.