Millwright Maintenance Lead: Fmcg

Skills Connector; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 600,000 - 1,080,000; Full time

Job summary

Our client in South Africa seeks an experienced Industrial Maintenance Engineer to lead and optimize maintenance across a production plant. You will drive preventive and predictive maintenance, supervise technicians, and ensure compliance with safety and food hygiene standards.

The role requires coordinating major overhauls, managing spares, and collaborating with production and quality teams to minimize downtime and support continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Lead preventive and predictive maintenance program across shifts.
• Supervise and mentor maintenance technicians and plan rosters.
• Ensure safety, food hygiene, and regulatory standards are followed.
• Coordinate major overhauls and contract work.
• Analyse plant performance data to identify improvements.
• Maintain detailed maintenance logs and KPI reporting.
• Manage spare parts inventory and procurement with asset care.
• Collaborate with production and quality teams to align maintenance with schedules.

Job description

Key Responsibilities

Equipment Maintenance & Troubleshooting

• Lead the maintenance and repair of equipment, including but not limited to - conveyors (belt & bucket), air compressors, seasoning machines, packaging machines, puffing machines, mixing machines, multi-head weighers, and forklifts
• Respond quickly to machine breakdowns and coordinate timely repair to minimize production downtime
• Conduct root cause analysis and implement permanent fixes for recurring issues

Preventive & Corrective Maintenance

• Execute and improve the preventive maintenance program across all shifts
• Monitor equipment performance data and initiate predictive maintenance when trends indicate potential failures
• Maintain detailed logs and documentation of all maintenance work performed

Team Leadership & Coordination

• Supervise and mentor maintenance technicians, including assigning tasks, providing technical guidance, and evaluating performance
• Plan shift rosters to ensure full coverage of maintenance needs during production
• Ensure compliance with safety, food hygiene, and regulatory standards at all times

Spare Parts & Tools Management

• Ensure availability of critical spare parts and tools and raise procurement requests as needed
• Monitor usage and work with the Maintenance Manager to optimize inventory levels and control costs

Collaboration with Production & Quality Teams

• Work closely with production supervisors to prioritize maintenance activities based on production schedules
• Collaborate with quality assurance to ensure that maintenance activities support food safety requirements

Reporting & Compliance

• Report maintenance KPIs (Downtime, MTTR, PM completion rate, etc.) to the Maintenance Manager weekly
• Ensure all safety protocols, lockout/tagout procedures, and hygiene practices are strictly followed

MILLWRIGHT MAINTENANCE LEAD: FOOD MANUFACTURING

• Drive execution of routine preventative and predictive maintenance.
• Lead the development of maintenance standard maintenance procedures for Production Plant.
• Ensure problem solving tools are used by the team and take part in problem solving sessions.
• Lead the development of the reliability plan for Production Plant and ensure maintenance team has the required competencies.
• Determine material, equipment, and supplies to be used and ensure that these are ordered and available at the work site, in conjunction with the input of the asset care planner.
• Use planned maintenance schedules to co-ordinates daily activities of artisans, machine operators and assistants.
• Develop a daily work schedule for all activities to be performed to ensure the smooth operation of the team, minimize downtime and overtime taking food safety imperatives into consideration.
• Supervise and assign maintenance work to contractors daily, ensuring clear allocation of responsibility and accountability.
• Control daily job cards, by issuing to employees, receive back completed ones and verify work is done satisfactorily.
• Analyse Production Plant performance data to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Identify and implement best in class cost saving initiatives within Production Plant.
• Evaluate and implement performance improvement suggestion CAPEX projects within Production Plant.
• Evaluate and sign off new equipment and all Production Plant modifications.

Engineering Team Leadership

• Management of the Maintenance team with regards to HR and IR issues.
• Management of the day-to-day activities and outputs of all team members across 4 shifts.

Health & Safety

• Responsible for health and safety with regards to all equipment to ensure a safe environment to operate and work on for all staff.

Budgets and Administration

• Management of the maintenance spend against budget through daily review of budget vs. actual financial reports.

Problem Solving

• Where problems have occurred during routine or planned maintenance activities, apply structured problem solving approach to resolve.

Project Management

• Give input to the Plant and Project Engineer on the feasibility of projects by analyzing technology, resources needs and market demands to ensure that project is feasible.
• Coordinate major overhauls of existing equipment.
• Coordinate and inspect major contract work in area of responsibility.

Stock Control

• Control the distribution of equipment and supplies amongst artisans.

Governance

• Ensure that Company ethical standards and the requirements of the RPM are adhered to.
• Report and or elevate any areas of non- compliance appropriately.

Information and Data Management

• Ensure team members accurately and regularly captures data onto the information System to enable access to reliable data and reporting for trend analysis and decision making.
• Share relevant data with management teams to enable reliable business decision making.

Effective Teamwork & Self-Management

• Take ownership and accountability for tasks and activities and demonstrates effective self-management in terms of planning and prioritizing, and self- development.

Industrial Maintenance Engineer

Our client seeks a highly skilled Industrial Maintenance Engineer to join