Plant Manager

The Plant Manager is responsible for overall performance of the manufacturing site, including safety, quality, service, cost, people, and culture. This role owns the site P&L and provides strategic and operational leadership to ensure reliable execution today while building the capabilities required for future growth.

The Plant Manager leads through an operating model, aligning cross-functional teams to deliver business results, develop leaders, and embed continuous improvement and safety as core ways of working.

Responsibilities

Primary Responsibilities:

Site Leadership & Business Ownership • Lead the Site Leadership Team to operate as a unified, accountable leadership system and the entire workforce to maximize productivity and job satisfaction. Leads by organizational operating principles, ultimately defining the culture and level of engagement at the plant location. • Own full site P&L, including cost, service, and productivity performance. • Establish site vision, priorities, and goals aligned to enterprise strategies. • Represent the site to corporate leadership and external stakeholders.

Safety, Quality & Compliance • Create and sustain a zero-injury culture; ensure compliance with all safety, health, and environmental regulations. • Serve as the site’s senior leader accountable for food safety, quality systems, and regulatory compliance. • Ensure audit readiness and strong relationships with customers, auditors, and regulators.

Operations & Reliability • Ensure safe, predictable, and reliable operations across all value streams and warehousing. • Partner with Maintenance and Engineering to drive asset reliability and capital planning. • Oversee production planning, scheduling adherence, and inventory management in partnership with Supply Chain. • Drive improvements in OEE, uptime, and throughput.

People, Culture & Capability • Build a high-performance culture rooted in Marzetti Growth Behaviors and an Owner Mindset. • Develop and coach plant leaders. • Ensure strong succession planning and leadership pipeline across the site. • Partner with HR to drive engagement, capability building, and workforce planning.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation • Champion CI, and operational excellence principles across the site. • Lead and sponsor breakthrough improvements to processes, technology, and operating models. • Leverage benchmarking and best practices to keep the site competitive and innovative.

Cross-Functional & Enterprise Collaboration • Partner with QA, Planning, HR, Finance, Engineering, Procurement, Commercial, and R&D teams. • Align site priorities with broader supply chain, customer, and enterprise needs. • Participate in cross-site and enterprise initiatives to drive network performance.

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Qualifications • Progressive manufacturing leadership experience; food or beverage manufacturing preferred. • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, operations, or related field required or equivalent experience; MBA preferred. • Proven success leading multiple value streams or functions. • Strong financial acumen with full P&L responsibility. • Demonstrated ability to lead through change while delivering results through operational metrics.