Operations Manager

The Wonderful Company•Mission, TX

33d•Onsite

About The Position

Wonderful Citrus is North America’s leading integrated grower, shipper and packer of fresh citrus, including clementines/mandarins, navel and Valencia oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits, and other citrus varieties. Wonderful Citrus farms more than 74,000 acres of fresh citrus and has supplier relationships around the world to ensure a year-round supply. Our citrus can be found in all channels of distribution, with our consumer brands most visible in the produce department of grocery stores across the globe under our flagship consumer brands, Wonderful Halos Mandarins, Wonderful Seedless Lemons, and Wonderful Sweet Scarletts Texas Red Grapefruit.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education and significant manufacturing leadership experience.
8–10 years of progressive manufacturing experience.
5+ years of manufacturing leadership experience.
Experience managing production operations, employees, budgets and KPIs.
Strong knowledge of industrial safety, quality systems and manufacturing processes.
Demonstrated experience improving safety, quality, reliability, productivity and cost.
Strong analytical, communication and organizational skills.
Computer literacy: Microsoft Suite, Power BI, etc.
Have the ability to travel domestically and internationally. (~10%)

Nice To Haves

Engineering, Food Science, Operations or related technical degree.
10–15+ years manufacturing experience.
Previous Plant Manager or Operations Manager experience.
Food/beverage or citrus processing experience.
HACCP/PCQI training.
Lean/Six Sigma training or certification.
Experience with sanitary processing, CIP and thermal processing.
Experience managing a facility with refrigeration, boilers, wastewater and other significant utilities.
Experience with capital projects and plant expansions.
Bilingual: English/Spanish

Responsibilities

Own daily plant execution and production schedule; maximize throughput while balancing quality, maintenance and labor requirements.
Plans and directs production activities and establishes production priorities for products in keeping with effective operations and cost factors.
Develop budget and cost controls, and obtain data regarding types, quantities, specifications, and delivery dates of parts and equipment ordered.
Coordinate operations with agriculture/fruit supply, planning, quality, engineering, maintenance, warehouse, logistics and commercial teams.
Confer with management to establish production KPIs and how they are monitored and reported.
Maximize juice, pulp, oil and other valuable product recovery from incoming fruit; investigate losses and process inefficiencies.
Reviews and analyzes production, quality control, maintenance, and operational reports to determine causes of nonconformity with product specifications and operating or production problems.
Develop and implement operating methods and procedures designed to eliminate operating problems and improve product quality. Ensure these methods are documented and trained as per company standards.
Conducts meetings to resolve or effectively reach a settlement of grievances and refers unresolved grievances to the human resources department.
Ensure production data is accurately entered into the ERP systems in a timely manner.
Lead root-cause analysis and improvement projects; eliminate recurring losses and bottlenecks; promote Lean/CI principles.
Partner with maintenance to improve equipment reliability; prioritize critical work; ensure preventive/predictive maintenance is executed; reduce emergency work.
Partner with food safety and quality to ensure compliance with internal polices, complete corrective actions in a timely manner, or any other task required to meet GFSI expectations.
Lead production; develop supervisors; establish accountability and succession planning.
Establish a strong safety culture; ensure OSHA compliance; enforce LOTO, confined space, chemical/ammonia, PPE and other programs; drive incident investigations and corrective actions.
Ensure compliance with HACCP/FSMA, sanitation and GMP programs; maintain audit readiness; ensure deviations are properly controlled and documented.
Be the subject matter expert for teams for the operations aspect of the business, supporting CAPEX, maintenance and FSQA.
Effectively present operations related projects, initiatives, performance results, and other key updates to business leadership and employees.
The Director of Operations, at any time, depending on the needs of the company, could add other duties.