Quality Lead

At Russell Stover, not only do we love chocolate, but we love our jobs! Every day we go to work exhibiting our values of excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship, responsibility, and collaboration. Working at Russell Stover you’ll be part of the leading manufacturer of boxed, seasonal, and sugar-free chocolates. For over 100 years, Russell Stover Chocolates, Whitman’s, and Pangburn’s have been crafted with the finest ingredients to bring happiness to generations.

Today, we produce over 55 million pounds of chocolate annually, and our legacy brands can be found in 13 company-owned stores and over 9,000 wholesale accounts. Join our team and let’s continue making chocolate lovers happy!

As a Quality Lead
, you will work directly with the Quality Assurance manager as well as your team members to ensure that only the finest product is shipped to our consumers. This will include conducting quality inspections, resolving quality issues, investigating root causes, directing and training team members, and following proper procedure for all documentation. You will also learn the job function of all quality team members so that you may relieve them during breaks or while on vacation or sick leave.

Inventory management, audit prep, and general leadership are some of the other key functions.

• Ensure QA department team performs and verifies food safety, sanitation, and quality programs per plant food safety plan, prerequisite programs, ssops, sops, and training.
• Lead the QA team.
• Floor Support for audit preparation and during the audit.
• Back-up to any hourly team member within the QA department.
• Ensure that daily inventory (ingredients or consumables) shortages (due to rate of use, hold disposition, or expiration) do not impact the plant meeting customer demand within the FSQA requirements.

Oversight and verification of food safety & quality programs such as but not limited to:

• Traceability management including mock recalls.
• Daily QA paperwork management to ensure the department and plant team has the correct forms needed to meet FSQA requirements. This includes updating and management of QA setup and the weights master log to meet current product mix and process capabilities within FSQA requirements.
• Lab ingredient inventory management, batching process, traceability paperwork review, and SAP minor usage management to ensure batching is performed to meet schedule needs.
• Expired and obsolete product management; working cross functionally with other plant departments to ensure FSQA requirements are met. While minimizing impact whenever possible to schedule, compliance, and OEE.
• CCPs and PRPs floor implementation.
• CAPA floor implementation. Be an active member in root cause analysis and preventative measures on the floor.
• QA department training including new QA team members, updating training for current QA team, and annual requalification of the QA team.
• Daily PCQI audit review including documentation tracking and following-up on corrective actions, preventative actions identified to ensure FSQA requirements are met.
• Be leader and first line of contact for plant FSQA procedures and sanitation SSOPs implementation on the floor. Answer questions and give guidance related to these programs to support training and direction given by the FSC and/or FSQA manager in day-to-day production.
• Floor support for Audits in preparation and during the audit.
• Hold management program on the floor on daily basis including ensuring all potentially affected product is segregated and identified, then working with other departments as needed to complete final disposition with proper documentation.
• Manage department consumable inventory to ensure FSQA required tasks can be completed and department stays within FSQA manager’s budget plan.
• The QA lead reports directly to the FSQA Supervisor, however in their absence they will escalated concerns or issues to the Food Safety Coordinator or specialist unless otherwise directed by the FSQA Supervisor.
• Adhere to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) to ensure product quality and maintain compliance with food safety standards.
• Complete and follow FSQA training and…