Plant Controller

PLANT CONTROLLER

Plant Controller needed for a manufacturing company located about 45 minutes from Crossville, TN. This is a Direct Hire opportunity with a well established company. The company offers a competitive pay and benefits package (salary range $125,000 to $150,000 with potentially more based on product industry experience).

The Plant Controller is the senior financial leader for the manufacturing facility, providing accurate, timely financial analysis and reporting to support both day-to-day operational decisions and long-term strategic planning. This role owns cost accounting, inventory valuation, and financial controls specific to a production environment — including procurement, and secondary operations (sizing, machining, heat treating, plating) — and partners closely with the Plant Manager and operations leadership to protect margins on programs supplied to major automotive and industrial OEMs.

• Track and report scrap, rework, and product reclamation costs; identify opportunities to reduce material loss from receipt through final shipment.
• Maintain accurate standard costs and routings as engineering changes, tooling revisions, or customer specification changes occur on existing gear, cam, sprocket, and multilevel-part programs.
• Analyze press downtime, tooling amortization, and die life costs and their impact on part-level profitability — critical given the tight tolerances demanded by automotive and industrial OEM customers.

• Maintain accurate perpetual inventory records for raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods across the plant's production stages.
• Lead or oversee cycle counts and the annual physical inventory; investigate and resolve discrepancies between book and physical inventory.
• Monitor inventory aging, obsolescence, and slow-moving customer‑specific tooling and dies; recommend reserves as appropriate.
• Partner with purchasing on lead times and safety stock levels, balancing working capital efficiency with the plant's commitment to reliable, fast delivery.

• Prepare monthly financial statements, plant P&L, and management reporting packages for the Plant Manager and Executive Leadership team.
• Analyze plant performance against budget/forecast, explaining variances in material, labor, overhead, and manufacturing spend by program and customer.
• Prepare weekly/monthly KPI dashboards covering press utilization, scrap rates, on‑time delivery, and cost per part/pound by customer program.
• Support month‑end and year‑end close, including journal entries, accruals, and account reconciliations.

• Lead the annual operating budget and periodic forecast updates for the plant in coordination with the Plant Manager and corporate finance.
• Develop financial justifications (ROI/payback analysis) for capital investment in new presses, furnaces, tooling, and automation to support growth with existing and new OEM customers.
• Model the financial impact of new part quotes and program awards, including tooling investment, press cycle time, expected yield, and target margin — supporting the sales/quoting process for new business.

• Establish and maintain strong internal controls over inventory, fixed assets, purchasing, and manufacturing transactions.
• Ensure compliance with corporate accounting policies and any customer‑specific financial/reporting requirements (e.g., OEM supplier scorecards, cost breakdowns).
• Coordinate with internal/external auditors on plant‑level audits and inventory observations.
• Track and properly account for customer‑owned tooling separately from company‑owned tooling and dies.

• Act as a trusted financial advisor to the Plant Manager / CEO and operations leadership, translating financial data into actionable insight on the plant floor.
• Partner with Quality and Engineering on cost‑of‑quality tracking (scrap, rework, customer returns/PPAP‑related costs).
• Supervise and develop plant accounting/administrative staff as applicable.
• Support new business…