Production Manager

Butternut Mountain Farm•Morrisville, VT

8d•Onsite

About The Position

The Production Manager leads production across multiple departments, lines, and two shifts, aligning schedules, labor, materials, equipment capacity, and inventory with customer demand and business needs. The role develops frontline leaders, ensures safe and compliant operations, controls production costs, drives continuous improvement, and partners across functions to deliver reliable customer service.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in management, Business, Economics, Engineering or related field
Leadership experience across multiple departments, production lines, or shifts in food, beverage, bottling, packaging, or another regulated manufacturing environment.
Working knowledge of SQF, HACCP, GMPs, sanitation, food safety, traceability, and production documentation.
Experience using production KPIs, ERP/MRP systems, scheduling, inventory control, forecasting, and capacity planning.
Knowledge of Lean, 5S, root-cause analysis, preventive maintenance, equipment reliability, and continuous improvement.
Experience with budgeting, labor and overtime management, production cost control, hiring, coaching, performance management, and employee development.
Strong Excel and data-analysis skills, mechanical aptitude, and familiarity with automated filling, packaging, conveying, batching, or processing equipment and related capital projects.

Responsibilities

Lead production across departments, lines, and shifts; adjust schedules and resources to customer demand, inventory, staffing, materials, equipment capacity, and constraints; coordinate all production areas; and protect schedule attainment, service, and cost performance.
Maintain strong safety, food safety, quality, sanitation, and traceability culture; enforce policies, procedures, and work instructions; ensure accurate records; lead corrective actions; and support SQF, regulatory, customer, environmental, workplace, and internal audit requirements.
Establish and communicate KPIs for productivity, throughput, labor, overtime, downtime, waste, quality, staffing, and schedule attainment; use data and root-cause analysis to improve reliability, efficiency, workflows, equipment utilization, material handling, and cost.
Optimize syrup, ingredients, packaging, labor, and other resources; reduce loss, waste, rework, and abnormal usage; maintain inventory accuracy and traceability; and resolve significant discrepancies or shortages.
Coordinate repairs, preventive maintenance, and planned downtime with Maintenance; address recurring reliability issues; and support equipment trials, installations, startups, replacements, and capital projects.
Lead and develop supervisors, leads, and employees; set performance expectations; conduct coaching, reviews, training, and development planning; strengthen frontline decision-making; and participate in hiring, onboarding, employee relations, corrective action, and personnel decisions.
Manage staffing, overtime, absenteeism, labor utilization, and operating expenses; participate in the Production budget; and support annual operating, capital, and long-range capacity plans.
Communicate priorities, risks, constraints, and performance to the Operations Management Team; resolve issues across functions; and provide production input for new products, packaging, process changes, equipment projects, and capacity decisions.