Operations Analyst - Manufacturing & Distribution

Clover Sonoma; Petaluma (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Job summary

Clover Sonoma in Petaluma, California, seeks an Operations Analyst to transform complex manufacturing and distribution data into clear, actionable insights that drive improvements in throughput, downtime, labor productivity, and cost.

You will work across the plant and distribution network using Redzone, SAP S/4HANA, Power BI, and other systems; you’ll administer Redzone, optimize configurations, and translate analyses into practical recommendations for operations leaders and frontline teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business Analytics, Data Analytics, Industrial Engineering, Operations Management, Supply Chain, Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or equivalent.
• 3+ years in an operations/industrial analytics role.
• Experience in manufacturing, dairy, CPG, warehouse, or distribution environments preferred.
• Strong technical aptitude to learn, administer, and optimize operational software platforms.
• Proficiency with Power BI and ERP data (SAP/SAP S/4HANA).
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Collect, integrate, analyze, and interpret data across manufacturing and distribution operations.
• Serve as Redzone administrator; manage configuration, users, workflows, and dashboards.
• Increase Redzone adoption and embed it into daily operating routines.
• Analyze production performance across lines, shifts, and periods (OEE, throughput, downtime).
• Analyze distribution performance, inventory movement, and labor utilization.
• Identify root causes; translate findings into actionable recommendations.
• Develop and maintain intuitive dashboards and reports for leaders and frontline teams.
• Support daily/weekly operations reporting and performance reviews.
• Ensure data integrity and establish reliable sources of truth.

Skills

Data analysis

Data storytelling

SQL

Excel

Problem solving

On-site collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Analytics or related field

Tools

Redzone

SAP S/4HANA

Power BI

Job description

As a purpose-driven, certified B corporation, Clover is leading the way for conscious businesses by demonstrating care for all stakeholders and moving the world forward. We are committed to lowering our environmental impact and meeting our sustainability targets, by providing kids and adults with healthy, nutritious, and delicious products that are made with care for animals, people, and the planet.

About the Role

We are seeking a technically strong, analytically driven Operations Analyst to support Clover Sonoma's dairy manufacturing and distribution operations. This role will transform complex operational data into clear, actionable, and easy-to-understand insights that help Operations leaders and frontline teams improve performance, productivity, reliability, service, and cost.

The Operations Analyst will work across our manufacturing plant and distribution operations, bringing together information from Redzone, SAP S/4HANA, Power BI, and other operational systems to establish a clear picture of performance and identify opportunities for improvement.

A critical responsibility of this position is serving as the business administrator and operational subject-matter expert for Redzone, Clover's connected-worker/manufacturing platform. The Analyst will help ensure Redzone is properly configured, maintained, adopted, and used effectively by plant leadership, supervisors, and frontline teams.

This is not simply a reporting role. The successful candidate must be able to understand how a dairy manufacturing and distribution operation actually works, investigate what the data is telling us, identify the operational drivers behind performance, and translate complex information into practical recommendations that Operations teams can act on.

A Day in the Life

• Operational Data Analysis & Insights: Collect, integrate, analyze, and interpret data across manufacturing and distribution operations to identify trends, performance gaps, recurring issues, constraints, and opportunities for improvement.

• Redzone Administration & Optimization: Serve as Clover's primary Operations administrator for Redzone. Maintain system configuration, users, permissions, operational structures, workflows, data standards, dashboards, and reporting while partnering with Operations and IT on integrations and technical issues.

• Redzone Adoption: Partner with plant leadership, supervisors, frontline leaders, and operators to increase effective utilization of Redzone and ensure the platform becomes an embedded part of daily operating routines rather than simply another reporting system.

• Manufacturing Performance Analytics: Analyze production performance across lines, shifts, products, and operating periods, including metrics such as throughput, attainment, downtime, OEE and related measures, changeover performance, labor productivity, waste/yield, equipment losses, and other operational KPIs.

• Distribution & Warehouse Analytics: Analyze distribution and warehouse performance, including productivity, order fulfillment, service levels, route/dispatch performance, inventory movement, labor utilization, loading activities, and other relevant operational measures.

• Root-Cause & Performance Analysis: Go beyond reporting what happened to help Operations understand why it happened. Analyze underlying drivers, recurring patterns, correlations, and operational exceptions and work with the team to identify potential root causes and corrective actions.

• Reporting & Visualization: Develop and maintain intuitive dashboards, scorecards, reports, and visualizations that allow leaders and frontline teams to quickly understand performance, identify exceptions, and focus on the actions that matter most.

• Daily/Weekly Operations Reporting: Develop consistent reporting and performance-management tools supporting daily production meetings, shift reviews, weekly operating reviews, and leadership performance discussions.

• Data Integration: Extract, clean, reconcile, and integrate operational data from Redzone, SAP S/4HANA, Power BI/data environments, spreadsheets, and other manufacturing and distribution systems.

• Data Integrity: Identify inconsistencies, gaps, and discrepancies across operational systems and partner with Operations, IT, Finance, Quality, and other stakeholders to improve data integrity and establish reliable sources of truth.

• Continuous Improvement: Use operational data to identify opportunities to improve throughput, labor utilization, equipment performance, downtime, changeovers, waste, yield, service levels, and overall operational efficiency.

• Operational Problem Solving: Respond to ad hoc analytical needs from Operations leadership, quickly gathering and analyzing information to help teams understand emerging operational issues and make informed decisions.

• Business Partnership: Spend time with Operations teams in the plant, warehouse, and distribution environment to understand processes firsthand. Build strong working relationships with plant leadership, frontline supervisors, Maintenance, Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, Distribution, Finance, and IT.

• Training & Enablement: Train and support Redzone users and Operations leaders on system functionality, dashboards, reports, KPI definitions, and effective use of operational data.

• Process & Data Governance: Help establish consistent KPI definitions, reporting standards, system practices, and documentation so Operations teams are working from reliable and consistently understood information.

Role Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Business Analytics, Data Analytics, Industrial Engineering, Operations Management, Supply Chain, Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 3+ years of experience in an operations analyst, manufacturing analyst, business analyst, industrial engineering, continuous improvement, or similar analytical role.

• Experience working in a manufacturing, food/beverage, dairy, CPG, warehouse, or distribution environment strongly preferred.

• Strong technical aptitude and demonstrated ability to learn, administer, and optimize operational software platforms.

• Strong proficiency with Manufacturing Software - Redzone experience strongly preferred. Experience administering or serving as a power user for a manufacturing execution, connected-worker, production-management, or similar operational technology platform may be considered.

• Experience working with ERP data; SAP/SAP S/4HANA experience strongly preferred.

• Strong proficiency with Power BI or a comparable business intelligence/data visualization platform.

• Strong Excel capabilities, including advanced formulas, PivotTables, Power Query, and data manipulation.

• Working knowledge of SQL and the ability to query, combine, manipulate, and validate data from multiple sources.

• Experience building dashboards and reporting tools designed for operational rather than purely technical audiences.

• Understanding of manufacturing KPIs and concepts such as production attainment, throughput, downtime, OEE, yield, waste, labor productivity, changeovers, and equipment performance.

• Ability to work with large and imperfect datasets, reconcile discrepancies, and determine whether data is sufficiently reliable for operational decision-making.

• Demonstrated ability to translate complex analyses into simple, actionable business insights for leaders, supervisors, and frontline teams.

• Strong analytical, problem-solving, organizational, and communication skills.

• Ability and willingness to work onsite within manufacturing and distribution environments.

What You Bring to the Team

• Operational curiosity. You don't stop at identifying that a number changed—you want to understand what happened on the floor that caused it.

• Technical strength. You are comfortable learning systems, understanding how data flows between them, troubleshooting issues, and becoming the internal expert others turn to for help.

• Data storytelling. You can take thousands of rows of operational information and turn them into a handful of insights that a plant manager or supervisor can understand and act on.

• Frontline orientation. You are comfortable working with operators, supervisors, maintenance technicians, warehouse teams, and operational leaders in a plant environment.

• Attention to data integrity. You question inconsistent data, validate sources, investigate discrepancies, and understand that decisions are only as good as the information behind them.

• Continuous-improvement mindset. You naturally look for patterns, waste, inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and opportunities to improve processes.

• Practical problem solving. You balance analytical rigor with the reality of a fast-moving manufacturing environment and know when the organization needs an actionable answer rather than a perfect analysis.

• Ability to work through ambiguity. You can build structure where processes, reporting, or data ownership are still evolving.

• Self-direction and ownership. You proactively investigate issues, find the appropriate data sources, ask questions, and follow problems through to resolution.

• Strong communication and influence. You can explain technical concepts simply and help Operations teams adopt new tools and data-driven ways of working.

• Bilingual in English and Spanish a plus.

Measures of Success

Success in this role will ultimately be demonstrated by more than the number of dashboards produced. Key indicators include Redzone adoption and data quality; reliable operational KPI reporting; reduced manual reporting; improved visibility into manufacturing and distribution performance; faster identification of performance losses and operational issues; and, most importantly, evidence that Operations teams are using the Analyst's insights to make better day-to-day decisions.

Based in Petaluma, California, in the heart of beautiful Sonoma County, Clover Sonoma offers high quality dairy sourced from its network of local family farms. A pioneer in sustainable dairy farming Clover has the largest organic acreage of regeneratively farmed land in the state and is committed to reducing its carbon footprint by lowering on-farm methane emissions, regenerative farming practices focused on soil health and packaging innovation. The first dairy in the US to become American Humane certified across all of its farms, Clover has delivered on its promise of producing the highest-quality dairy products — including milk, cheese, butter, and more — for more than a century.

As a Certified B Corporation® Clover gives back 5% of net profits to help make nutritious food more accessible and uses its business as a power for good across its support for people, farms, animals, community and planet.

For more information, please visit www.cloversonoma.com and join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube.