General Manager Operations

Location: Cambridgeshire

General Manager Operations

Cambridgeshire | £85,000 to £95,000 plus bonus, company car and benefits | Defined route to Operations Director

Most operations roles at this level arrive with the structure already built, the plan already written and somebody above you who owns both. You inherit a machine and you are measured on keeping it running.

This is not one of those roles. You are being asked to lead an operation that works well today, and to build the version of it that will carry a business through the most significant period of growth in its recent history.

The organisation

A privately owned, multi-site logistics business with a long trading history and a deliberate position in the market. It specialises in food and food ingredients, handling storage, distribution, container work, value added services and contract packing for clients who have stayed with it for decades rather than for contract terms. It has grown steadily and profitably, it is conservatively financed, and it has never had any interest in winning work on price alone.

What it sells is precision and care. Customers use it because their goods are handled properly, because problems are spotted before they become costs, and because the same people answer the phone year after year. That is a genuine commercial position rather than a marketing line and protecting it while the business grows is a real part of this job.

The business now intends to double the size of the operation over the next three years, through a combination of organic growth and acquisition. That ambition is the reason this appointment exists.

The role and its remit

You will lead the entire operation, reporting directly to the Chief Executive. Warehousing, transport, contract packing, quality and compliance across multiple accredited sites all sit with you, together with the site management teams who run them day to day.

You will own the operating budget in full. You will build toward running your own profit and loss and presenting it to the board, reviewing the numbers weekly, flagging exceptions as they arise rather than saving them for a monthly meeting, and using conversations with customers to anticipate volume and plan labour and agency cover before it becomes urgent.

You will carry accountability for accreditation and food safety across every site, and for health and safety across both warehousing and transport. You will lead the operational management team, develop the layer beneath it and build the succession that a growing business needs.

When the business acquires again, and it fully intends to, you will assess the target operationally and lead the integration of its people, its systems and its standards.

The challenge, in practical terms

Three things will occupy your first year, and the business is open about all of them.

The first is measurement. Performance reporting has not kept pace with growth. Measurement today leans toward customer service and complaints, with less on service levels, cost to serve, utilisation and compliance. You will build the framework that a business of this size and ambition needs, and you will be given the room to do it.

The second is consistency. The sites have grown up at different times and in different ways, and some have operated with considerable independence and done so effectively. Standards, reporting and ways of working need to align. Doing that without alienating capable people who have run their sites well for years is the harder half of the task.

The third is systems. A capable warehouse management system was implemented relatively recently and now runs across the business, but it is largely being used to replicate what the previous system did. Nobody has yet asked whether the business is getting everything it…