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Technical Manager

£85k + benefits etc

Midlands

Overview

Technical Manager for one of the world’s most impressive factories, which has had >£(phone number removed) invested in the last 7 years.

The Site

The site has over 700 SKUs and 10 lines. They’ve invested more than £200M in the site in the last few years. For those who can’t do basic arithmetic, that’s a lot of factory. Your equipment and fabric is almost brand new. The staffing levels have gone up as well, with the site nearly doubling its team. So has the complexity and pace of the site, so they need someone capable of managing both complexity and pace.

* 10 lines, 700 SKUs.

* Enormous investment = jewel in the crown of a fantastic portfolio business.

* The hallmarks of the site are: complexity, pace, and size.

The Job

The boring bit: You’re responsible for all the usual KPIs around quality, reductions in customer complaints etc. As well as that, you’re responsible to a number of internal customers.

The actual bit: This site is massive. The product barrels off the lines at a frightening pace. And the pace, size and complexity of the plant mean you’ve got to have a certain amount of bandwidth to manage the site. As well as that, you need to be calm AND capable of working both at pace and to keep up the level of improvements.

* Large, fast site means you need to be switched on and bright.

* You’ll be sitting on the SMT so will need to be able to bring a level of professionalism and polish to the organisation.

* Responsible for usual suite of technical KPIs.

You

The boring bit: You need to be people oriented, not directive. An influencer not an autocrat.

The actual bit: You’re going to be asked, during interview, to outline what tangible outputs you’ve got from cultural change. At first pass, that seems like a bland word salad, but once you unpack it it’s a great question - and one a lot of people will struggle to answer.

That’s the level of organisational maturity we’ll be dealing with, and that’s the level of performance you’re going to have to be comfortable with.

You’re going to have considerable experience operating at a high level. If you’ve worked with big businesses before (as a member of the business, not only as a supplier), that’s going to help.

Because there will be a degree of navigating the organisational complexity.

* Technical manager (or similar role with a different title) in the food / drinks manufacturing industry.

* Operated at a high level in a professional business.

* Ideally have successfully executed cultural change within a large scale manufacturing business.

What to do now

Either press apply or email Jeremy Pierce As well as that, if you really want the job then point out what you’ve done in your roles which makes you right for it.

I’ll try to come back to everyone. If an application is patently ridiculous, I won’t come back. But I’ll make an effort to come back to every credible application personally