Food Manufacturer – Vice-President Operations

Our client is a fast-growing, well-established food manufacturer headquartered in the Toronto area. The company manufactures and distributes fresh and frozen products to bakeries, deli’s, frozen grocery and food service operators throughout Canada and the US. The company boasts a dominant market position in several of its product categories which continue to be expanded upon.

Privately owned, our client has a rich tradition of innovation and an impeccable track record of long-term growth and profitability. Over the past five years alone our client has more than doubled revenues while successfully undertaking several major equipment/capacity expansion initiatives. A loyal, committed and entrepreneurial team makes this all possible.

With further growth and expansion on the immediate horizon the firm is creating a new position, that of Vice-President Operations, which will have the specific responsibility of ensuring that the operations organization continues to execute and scale to meet that growth.

Scope of Position

Reporting to the company’s President, the VP Operations will be responsible for all matters relating to the company’s production processes from the ordering of goods and raw materials through to the efficient production and quality of product quantities sufficient to keep pace with market demand.

In achieving this, the VP Operations will evaluate all existing systems, processes and metrics with a view to recommending and then implementing continuous improvement mechanisms and disciplines which will minimize production costs and waste while maximizing production and quality outputs.

No less important, the VP Operations will achieve these results by cultivating positive relationships across the organization while nurturing a culture of excellence.

This is an outstanding opportunity that features:

• Strong industry and market leadership
• Committed ownership
• Highly innovative and motivated culture
• Growing market opportunity
• An opportunity to make a real difference

Functional Tasks

The VP Operations will provide strong leadership to the operations-related functional (production, quality, maintenance, supply chain and sanitation) ensuring that the team are encouraged and feel free to contribute and implement ideas that will improve the business.

The areas of responsibility include:

• Align and execute operational plans to strategic plans.
• Assess and evaluate all current production processes, make recommendations and execute ongoing changes that improve efficiencies and cost effectiveness.
• Develop meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics by which to better monitor, manage and improve operations.
• Develop strategic projects to identify and deliver key business improvements throughout operations from identifying initial potential opportunity, delivering the business case, gaining approval and delivering to agreed scope, budget and timescale.
• Cultivate a continuous improvement or related lean manufacturing (eg. Kaizen) culture across the organization.
• Play a hands-on role in managing all day-to-day operations working closely with key managers and team members.
• Supervise preparation of production schedules and plan ordering cycles to ensure production volumes can be met.
• Implement and manage systems for the ordering or goods and raw materials that minimizes stockholding quantities yet is suitably timed to ensure uninterrupted production of all of the company’s product lines in keeping with the market demand for each product. Work closely with the sales organization on demand planning/forecasting processes.
• Continually evaluate costing and supply chain strategies and approaches against best practices.
• Strategic planning, budget preparation and accountability for operational matters within the budget process.
• Ensure that all team members understand their objectives and that they are monitored. Provide regular and constructive feedback.
• Manage and oversee the maintenance and servicing of the company’s production equipment to minimize down times while maximizing the efficiency and working life of all production equipment and machinery.
• Set up working systems which minimize loss of packaging materials…