About The Role

The Site Production Manager is responsible for leading the day-to-day production operation and delivering performance across safety, food safety, quality, service, labour efficiency, waste, output, cost, and people standards.

The role requires a visible, hands-on production leader who can create structure, consistency, pace, and accountability across all shifts.

The successful candidate will be expected to manage daily production performance while also supporting improvement activity through lean manufacturing principles, daily management, root cause problem solving, standard work, training, and change management.

This is not simply a shift coordination role. The purpose of the role is to improve production discipline, support customer service, reduce recurring issues, and build stronger capability across the production team.

Responsibilities & Requirements

Safety, Food Safety and Quality

• Lead production in line with company health and safety, food safety, quality, legality, customer, hygiene, and compliance standards.
• Ensure safe systems of work, PPE, machine guarding, housekeeping, GMP, allergen controls, and hygiene standards are followed across all shifts.
• Work closely with Technical, Engineering, HR/H&S, and Site Leadership to close actions, reduce risk, and maintain audit readiness.
• Ensure non-conforming product is identified, contained, escalated, investigated, and prevented from recurring.

Production Performance

• Own daily production performance across all shifts.
• Ensure the production plan is understood, resourced, and delivered as effectively as possible.
• Drive improvement across key KPIs including plan attainment, customer service, shortages, output, labour efficiency, waste, giveaway, downtime, OEE, and shift performance.
• Ensure missed plans, shortages, service risks, labour issues, and downtime losses are escalated early with clear recovery plans.
• Use data to identify trends, recurring problems, and improvement priorities.
• Lead daily production reviews and ensure shift handovers are factual, structured, and action focused.

Shift Manager Leadership

• Lead, coach, and hold accountable the Shift Management team.
• Set clear expectations for shift discipline, communication, standards, escalation, labour control, problem solving, and performance delivery.
• Create consistency across all shifts so that standards do not vary depending on who is on duty.
• Ensure absence, conduct, capability, holidays, performance reviews, and training plans are managed properly.
• Develop a culture of ownership, pace, teamwork, and accountability.

Labour, Skills and Training

• Own labour deployment against the production plan and agreed labour standards.
• Work with Shift Managers and the Training Coordinator to maintain a live skills matrix.
• Identify skills gaps and build training plans that improve flexibility, resilience, and performance.
• Ensure training is treated as an ongoing capability-building process, not a one-off compliance exercise.
• Challenge inefficient labour usage and drive better deployment across lines, shifts, and departments.

Lean, Continuous Improvement and Change Management

• Apply lean manufacturing principles to reduce waste, improve flow, stabilise processes, and simplify ways of working.
• Lead improvement activity across changeovers, downtime, waste, labour efficiency, line performance, handovers, and standard work.
• Use root cause problem solving to address repeat failures rather than accepting them as normal.
• Support daily management systems, visual controls, escalation routines, problem-solving boards, and standard operating routines.
• Support operational change in a structured way so improvements are understood, implemented, followed, and sustained.

Cross-Functional Working

• Work closely with Planning to understand customer priorities, production constraints, capacity, labour requirements, and service risks.
• Work with Engineering to prioritise downtime losses, reliability issues, asset care, and maintenance-related improvement opportunities.
• Work with Technical to improve product quality, process control, and audit standards.
• Support NPD and trial activity while protecting normal production performance.
• Deputise for the Site Manager / Factory Manager where required.

Key Measures of Success

• Safety performance and action close-out
• Food safety, GMP, audit and quality standards
• Production plan attainment
• Customer service and shortage reduction
• Labour efficiency
• Waste and giveaway reduction
• Downtime and OEE improvement
• Shift handover discipline
• Daily management discipline
• Skills matrix progress
• Shift Manager performance
• Root cause closure on repeat issues
• Delivery of agreed change and improvement activity

Skills and Experience Required

• Strong experience in production leadership within food manufacturing, FMCG, bakery, chilled, frozen, or another high-volume manufacturing environment.
• Experience leading Shift Managers, Team Leaders, or production teams in a fast-paced operation.
• Strong understanding of production planning, labour control, waste reduction, quality standards, service delivery, and KPI management.
• Able to use data to identify performance gaps and take practical action.
• Experience applying lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, daily management, standard work, or root cause problem-solving methods.
• Experience supporting operational change, process improvement, or performance improvement activity.
• Confident leading from the factory floor while also contributing to site management discussions.
• Strong communicator with the ability to be firm, fair, visible, and consistent.
• Able to work under pressure while maintaining standards and discipline.

Minimum Requirements

• Level 3 Food Safety for Manufacturing or equivalent
• Level 3 HACCP for Manufacturing or equivalent
• IOSH Managing Safely or equivalent desirable
• Lean manufacturing / continuous improvement training desirable
• Change management training or practical change leadership experience desirable
• Strong numeracy, IT, and KPI management capability
• Experience using daily management systems or structured performance reviews