Production Leader - Food Manufacturing (Multi-Shift)

Butternut Mountain Farm; Morristown (VT); On-site; USD 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Paid holidays

Paid time off

401K retirement plan

Product discounts

Free breakfast for on-site staff

Job summary

Butternut Mountain Farm in Vermont is seeking a Production Manager to lead production across multiple departments, lines, and two shifts, aligning schedules, labor, materials, and equipment with customer demand. The role emphasizes safety, quality, and efficient operations while building frontline leaders.

You will drive continuous improvement, manage KPIs, and partner with functions to deliver reliable service, cost control, and compliant processes in a regulated manufacturing environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in management, business, economics, engineering or related field.
• Leadership experience across departments, production lines, or shifts in food, beverage, bottling, packaging, or another regulated manufacturing environment.
• Working knowledge of SQF, HACCP, GMPs, sanitation, food safety, traceability, and production documentation.
• Experience using production KPIs, ERP/MRP systems, scheduling, inventory control, forecasting, and capacity planning.
• Knowledge of Lean, 5S, root-cause analysis, preventive maintenance, equipment reliability, and continuous improvement.
• Experience with budgeting, labor and overtime management, production cost control, hiring, coaching, performance management, and employee development.
• Strong Excel and data-analysis skills, mechanical aptitude, and familiarity with automated filling, packaging, conveying, batching, or processing equipment and related capital projects.

Responsibilities

• Production planning and execution across departments, lines, and shifts; adjust schedules and resources to customer demand, inventory, staffing, materials, equipment capacity, and constraints; coordinate all production areas; and protect schedule attainment, service, and cost performance.
• Safety, quality, and compliance: Maintain strong safety, food safety, quality, sanitation, and traceability culture; enforce policies, procedures, and work instructions; ensure accurate records; lead corrective actions; and support SQF, regulatory, customer, environmental, workplace, and internal audit requirements.
• Performance and continuous improvement: Establish and communicate KPIs for productivity, throughput, labor, overtime, downtime, waste, quality, staffing, and schedule attainment; use data and root-cause analysis to improve reliability, efficiency, workflows, equipment utilization, material handling, and cost.
• Materials and inventory: Optimize syrup, ingredients, packaging, labor, and other resources; reduce loss, waste, rework, and abnormal usage; maintain inventory accuracy and traceability; and resolve significant discrepancies or shortages.
• Equipment and capital support: Coordinate repairs, preventive maintenance, and planned downtime with Maintenance; address recurring reliability issues; and support equipment trials, installations, startups, replacements, and capital projects.
• People leadership: Lead and develop supervisors, leads, and employees; set performance expectations; conduct coaching, reviews, training, and development planning; strengthen frontline decision-making; and participate in hiring, onboarding, employee relations, corrective action, and personnel decisions.
• Labor, budget, and capacity management: Manage staffing, overtime, absenteeism, labor utilization, and operating expenses; participate in the Production budget; and support annual operating, capital, and long-range capacity plans.
• Cross-functional leadership: Communicate priorities, risks, constraints, and performance to the Operations Management Team; resolve issues across functions; and provide production input for new products, packaging, process changes, equipment projects, and capacity decisions.

Skills

Data analysis

Lean manufacturing

Root-cause analysis

Budgeting experience

Labor management

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in management, business, economics, engineering or related field

Tools

ERP/MRP systems

Excel

Job description

Butternut Mountain Farm in Vermont is seeking a Production Manager to lead production across multiple departments, lines, and two shifts, aligning schedules, labor, materials, and equipment with customer demand. The role emphasizes safety, quality, and efficient operations while building frontline leaders.

You will drive continuous improvement, manage KPIs, and partner with functions to deliver reliable service, cost control, and compliant processes in a regulated manufacturing environment.