Reporting to the Head of Manufacturing, the Manufacturing Support Manager will have a leadership role within the manufacturing department. The role involves working in a fast-paced environment and is focused on leading the manufacturing team through structured Manufacturing Excellence programs that focus on talent development, continuous improvement, and data workflow optimisation. The MSM role is for forward thinking individuals that demonstrate management, motivation and leadership skills to support the business unit. The MSM possess a good understanding of the quality, technical, production and engineering issues and has a major inter-departmental impact. 

Key Accountabilities:

Leadership, People Management, and Organisational Development

• Direct oversight of at least 1 or 2 manufacturing sites
• Responsible for the talent development of Site Management through mentoring and coaching.
• Implementation of a structured and documented talent development program for all roles in the Manufacturing department in line with present and future people and skill requirements.
• Pro-actively identify skill gaps within the organisation and drive the required training and talent development initiatives to meet both present and future organisational needs.
• Team reviews to share knowledge, discuss activities, priorities, progress, and challenges.
• Responsible for Continuous Improvement methodology, training, coaching, and assessment.

Customer Service and Production Plan Execution

• Manufacturing adherence to the annual production plan for timely shipment and delivery.
• Identify, assess, and analyse opportunities to drive tangible and sustainable manufacturing KPI improvements in OEE, production plan adherence, and labour usage variances.
• Participation in NPD projects to ensure the timely Manufacturing preparedness for the successful launch of new products.

Efficient and Lean Manufacturing 

• Lead, roll-out and execution of the efficiency improvement program to structure autonomous maintenance, focused line improvement and preventive maintenance activities.
• Optimisation of the cost drivers for manufacturing functions activity-based costings, particularly with respect to labour utilisation and variances.
• Utilisation of Lean and Kaizen methodologies including 5S, visual factory techniques, problem-solving, standardisation, process improvement and value stream mapping.

Quality, Security and OHSE

• Leadership in driving compliance with all company guidelines and policies, especially those relating to Environmental health and safety, ethics and codes of conduct.
• Process & System Workflow Optimisation
• Project leadership for digitisation, optimisation of data collection workflows, ERP and systems integration projects,
• Elimination of non-value-added manual data collection and data processing activities through office automation and system driven workflows.
• Guide data standardization, collection, and utilization to drive continuous improvement 
• Data visualisation and ease of interpretation to provide timely fact-based decision making.

Freedom to Act

• Independence within budget, plans, policies, and precedents.

Ideal Candidate Profile

Education

• Masters level of education in Operations, Supply chain or a related field.  
• Graduate degree in Engineering, Sciences or relevant field.

Experience

• Minimum 15 years’ experience with at least 3 years’ senior management experience in the field of production planning and supply planning within the food sector or a related manufacturing industry
• Strategic Leadership experience in leading leaders 

Technical Skills

• Experience in a manufacturing environment.
• Experience with development of KPI's and efficiency measurement.
• Knowledge of operational excellence in supply chain and 5S methodology.
• Lean / Six Sigma credentials will be considered an asset.
• Ability to easily handle figures, tables, and databases.
• Development of procedures
• An adaptive thinking process required to bring significant evaluative judgement and innovative thinking to analyse, evaluate and arrive at conclusions 
• Data analysis and interpretation
• Root Cause Analysis

Competencies

• Judgement and decision making 
• Analytical thinking and problem solving
• Drive for results
• Building relationships
• Teamwork
• Influence and impact, including conflict management
• Presentation and facilitation
• Programme and project Management
• Developing people
• Planning and Organizing