Maintenance Manager in STATESVILLE, North Carolina at Merchants Metals LLC

The Maintenance Manager is responsible for leading the plant maintenance function and developing a reliable, disciplined maintenance system that supports safe and consistent manufacturing operations. The primary objective of this role is to transition the organization from a primarily reactive maintenance environment toward planned, preventive, and reliability-focused maintenance.

The successful candidate will quickly assess equipment condition and current maintenance practices, identify critical equipment and operational risks, establish preventive maintenance and work-management fundamentals, develop a critical spare-parts strategy, improve maintenance purchasing controls, and use downtime and failure data to drive continuous improvement. This is a hands-on leadership position requiring strong technical judgment, organization, follow-through, and partnership with Operations.

· Assess the current condition, reliability, and maintenance needs of plant equipment.

· Develop and execute a plan to transition maintenance from reactive breakdown response toward planned and preventive maintenance.

· Establish practical maintenance standards, routines, priorities, and follow-up processes.

· Use equipment history, operating conditions, OEM recommendations, and failure data to improve maintenance strategies.

· Identify chronic equipment issues and drive permanent corrective actions rather than repeated temporary repairs.

· Develop and maintain a critical-equipment list based on safety, production, quality, delivery, redundancy, repair time, and parts availability.

· Establish equipment criticality rankings or tiers to guide maintenance priorities and resources.

· Develop reliability plans for critical assets, including preventive maintenance, common failure modes, critical spare parts, vendor support, and recovery plans.

· Identify single points of failure and communicate significant equipment risks to plant leadership.

· Support repair-versus-replace and capital planning decisions using equipment condition and reliability data.

· Evaluate existing preventive maintenance activities and identify gaps.

· Develop preventive maintenance procedures and frequencies for equipment where adequate PMs do not exist.

· Coordinate PM schedules with Production to minimize disruption while protecting equipment reliability.

· Track PM completion and compliance, address overdue work, and verify that PM activities are effective.

· Introduce predictive or condition-based maintenance methods where appropriate.

· Establish consistent equipment for downtime tracking and reporting.

· Analyze downtime by asset, failure type, cause, repair duration, labor, and parts used.

· Use Pareto analysis and other problem-solving methods to identify the plant's largest reliability losses.

· Lead or support root cause analysis for significant and recurring equipment failures.

· Assign corrective actions, verify completion, and confirm that actions prevent recurrence.

· Identify critical spare parts by equipment and determine which parts should be stocked onsite.

· Establish appropriate minimum/maximum quantities, reorder points, and stocking strategies based on criticality, cost, failure frequency, availability, and supplier lead time.

· Maintain accurate part descriptions, OEM and alternate part numbers, equipment associations, and preferred suppliers.

· Identify obsolete or difficult-to-source components and develop risk-mitigation or replacement plans.

· Reduce emergency purchasing, unnecessary expedited freight, and avoidable stockouts while maintaining appropriate inventory levels.

· Improve organization and control of maintenance parts, tools, and supplies.

· Establish a consistent maintenance workflow: request, prioritize, plan, schedule, execute, document, and close.

· Maintain and routinely review an active maintenance backlog.

· Prioritize work based on safety, production impact, quality/customer risk, equipment criticality, preventive maintenance needs, and general repairs.

· Develop weekly maintenance schedules in coordination with Operations.

· Ensure labor, parts, tools, contractors, and technical resources are prepared before planned work begins.

· Plan major repairs, shutdown activities, equipment rebuilds, and longer-term maintenance projects.

· Lead maintenance personnel with clear expectations, accountability, coaching, and follow-through.

· Maintain a strong floor presence and build productive relationships with equipment operators and frontline leaders.

· Partner with Operations to balance immediate production requirements with long-term equipment reliability.

· Communicate equipment risks, maintenance priorities, planned downtime, and significant repair needs proactively.

· Develop maintenance team capability so technical knowledge and troubleshooting are not dependent on one individual.

· Manage outside contractors, service providers, and equipment vendors as required.

· Demonstrated maintenance leadership experience in a manufacturing or industrial environment.

· Experience developing or improving preventive maintenance and reliability programs.

· Experience with equipment criticality assessments and critical spare-parts management.

· Working knowledge of CMMS/work-order systems and maintenance planning practices.

· Demonstrated experience reducing downtime and addressing recurring equipment failures through structured problem solving and root cause analysis.

· Strong mechanical troubleshooting knowledge with practical exposure to electrical systems, controls/PLCs, hydraulics, pneumatics, welding/fabrication, or related industrial systems.

· Experience managing maintenance inventory, purchasing, vendors, contractors, and outside technical resources.

· Experience with maintenance budgets, major repairs, equipment installations, or capital projects preferred.

· Ability to read and interpret equipment manuals, schematics, technical documentation, and parts information.

· Strong computer skills and ability to use data to establish priorities and communicate performance.

· Hands-on, visible leadership style with a strong presence on the manufacturing floor.

· Structured problem-solving and sound technical judgment.

· Ability to prioritize effectively when multiple equipment and production issues occur simultaneously.

· Strong ownership, urgency, and follow-through.

· Ability to establish standards and hold the maintenance team accountable to them.

· Clear communication with Operations, leadership, technicians, vendors, and equipment operators.

· Willingness to challenge recurring temporary fixes and drive sustainable corrective actions.

· Ability to build systems and processes in an environment where maintenance practices may still be developing.

· Ability to balance immediate production demands with long-term equipment reliability and business risk.

This position operates primarily in a manufacturing environment and requires regular presence on the production floor. The role may require walking, standing, climbing stairs or platforms, inspecting equipment, and working around operating machinery. Appropriate personal protective equipment and compliance with all plant safety requirements are required.