Company Name
Confidential Search
Search Job Title
Director of Plant Operations
Client Profile
North American beverage manufacturer founded in Canada for leading consumer brands with 4 manufacturing facilities across North America. The newest and largest facility in the Northeast United States offers 8 filling lines for both high acid & low acid products with more than 400,000 sq. ft. under roof including 150,000 sq. ft. direct-to-customer high-density chilled warehouse.
Role Objectives & Challenges
To support our client’s rapidly growing US market share, our client prioritized the creation of a Director of Plant Operations to co-lead the site leadership team with a commitment to Safety, Quality, Productivity, Reliability and Cost Efficiency. The Director is also to empower and drive a continuous improvement culture of excellence and ensure alignment of functions and facility operations to increase customer satisfaction for quality and delivery metrics. The challenge was to source/qualify a top-tier, hands-on Operations leader with in-depth expertise building successful beverage manufacturing and quality programs from the ground up and optimizing them to world class standards.
Our Approach to Solve the Search
After a competing retained executive search was discharged, SCM Talent Group interviewed for the opportunity to lead a more robust “retained” national search effort targeting accomplished executive plant leaders, w/ exceptional team building skills. Given the role’s complexities, we agreed to meet every other week with the CEO, VP of Operations and HR to review Candidate Sourcing Pipeline reports (updated in real time) which highlighted candidate submittals and screening notes.
The Hire & Results
Three top-tier candidates were presented for collective review and interviewed on-site. Ultimately one candidate stood out as the preferred finalist due to his balanced leadership acumen and was shortly placed after we narrowed our candidate pool down to one accomplished finalist, who was placed after just 5 weeks from search start.
