Production Manager

Private Advertiser; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Private Advertiser is seeking an experienced Operations Manager to lead our Production and Warehouse operations, while coordinating site maintenance, engineering projects, and specialist contractor activities.

You will contribute to long-term strategy, continuous improvement, and future growth, building capability and improving plant performance across the site in Australia. The role requires strong leadership, practical problem-solving, and a hands-on, results-focused approach.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience in a chemical manufacturing environment.
• Strong people leadership and ability to develop teams.
• Experience implementing operational strategies and change programs.
• Experience managing budgets, capital projects and KPIs.
• Excellent communication and project management skills.
• Hands-on with day-to-day and long-term improvements.

Responsibilities

• Lead daily Production and Warehouse operations to meet safety, quality, service, and productivity targets.
• Oversee production planning, batching, blending, processing, packaging, inventory, and dispatch.
• Coach Supervisors and frontline teams to build capability and accountability.
• Manage maintenance, contractors, and plant reliability for uptime.
• Lead engineering projects, capital improvements, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Identify opportunities to improve capability, capacity, asset performance, and cost.
• Ensure equipment, utilities, and infrastructure meet current and future needs.
• Monitor KPIs: safety, quality, productivity, downtime, waste, inventory, service, and costs.

Skills

People leadership

Operations management

Problem solving

Communication

Project management

Lean Manufacturing

TPM

Education

Chemical/Mechanical Engineering or related

Operations/Manufacturing degree (preferred)

Tools

ERP/CMMS

Job description

Reporting to the Operations Manager, you will lead our Production and Warehouse operations while managing site maintenance activities, engineering projects and specialist contractors. As a key member of the site leadership team, you will be responsible for delivering operational results while contributing to the site's longer-term strategy, continuous improvement roadmap and future growth plans. You will play a critical role in building organisational capability, improving plant performance and ensuring the operation is well positioned to meet current and future business requirements.

Key responsibilities

• Lead daily Production and Warehouse operations, ensuring safety, quality, service, and productivity targets are achieved.
• Manage production planning, batching, blending, processing, packaging, inventory management, and customer dispatch activities.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and support to supervisors and frontline teams to build capability, accountability, and a high-performance culture.
• Manage site maintenance activities and manage specialist contractors to ensure plant reliability, equipment uptime, and operational efficiency.
• Manage planned maintenance programs, breakdown response, contractor performance, and engineering service providers.
• Lead engineering, capital improvement, and continuous improvement projects from planning through to implementation.
• Identify opportunities to improve manufacturing capability, capacity, asset performance, efficiency and cost effectiveness.
• Ensure plant equipment, utilities, and infrastructure are maintained and fit for purpose to support current and future business requirements.
• Monitor and improve key performance indicators including safety, quality, productivity, downtime, waste, inventory accuracy, customer service, and operating costs.
• Ensure compliance with Workplace Health and Safety (WHS), Dangerous Goods, environmental, and ISO management system requirements.

About you

• Demonstrated experience within a chemical manufacturing environment.
• Strong people leadership skills with the ability to develop teams, drive accountability and build positive working relationships across all levels of the business.
• Demonstrated experience developing and implementing operational strategies, business improvement initiatives and change management programs.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience managing budgets, capital projects and operational performance metrics.
• Excellent communication, organisational, project management, and problem-solving skills.
• A hands-on approach with the ability to balance day-to-day operational demands with longer-term business improvement initiatives.
• Qualifications in Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations Management, or a related discipline (preferred).
• Experience using ERP/CMMS systems and working within ISO 9001, ISO 45001, and ISO 14001 certified environments (preferred).
• Experience with Lean Manufacturing, TPM, 5S, HAZOP, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), asset reliability, and continuous improvement methodologies (preferred).

About us

We are a global chemical manufacturer supplying high-quality products to customers across Australia and international markets. With strong and sustained demand, we are committed to excellence in quality, safety, reliability, and innovation.