Plant Manager - Main Plant in Sandusky, Ohio at Decko Products LLC

About Decko Products LLC

Decko Products, LLC is a private label manufacturer based in Sandusky, Ohio, specializing in a variety of edible products for baking and decoration. We offer a wide range of products, including extruded royal icing decorations, butter cream icings, piping gel, and various fillings for cakes and desserts. We also provide special packaging services in the baking industry, ensuring high-quality standards and safety in our products. Decko Products operates an FDA-inspected facility, and our team is dedicated to meeting the demands of the food industry.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin. Equal employment opportunities will be extended in all aspects of the employer-employee relationship, including, but not limited to, recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, transfer, demotion, compensation, benefits, layoff, and termination. In addition, Decko Products LLC will make reasonable accommodation to known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified applicant with a disability, unless the accommodation imposes an undue hardship on the operation of our business.

We are looking for a hands-on plant manager to run our main manufacturing plant in Sandusky — a high-mix, high-changeover food plant producing frostings, icings, gels and related sweet goods for national retail customers under our own brands, private label and contract manufacturing agreements.

This is a turnaround seat, not a caretaker seat. The plant has good equipment, capable people and more demand than it is currently converting. Attainment and yield are below where they need to be, changeovers and start-ups are eating capacity, and the operating discipline that holds a plant to its plan has to be rebuilt. We want a leader who has done this before with Lean and TPM — someone who works from a loss tree, coaches supervisors on standard work, and is on the floor at shift start rather than reading about it the next morning.

The role owns safety, food safety and quality execution, production attainment, yield, cost and people development for the main plant. It is one of two plant leadership roles; the sister role leads the 2200 dry mix and tub plant. Both report to the Chief Operating Officer and share site services — engineering, planning, warehouse, and quality and sanitation.

The main plant runs filling and packaging lines across several technologies, plus the batching and processing equipment that feeds them. Final line assignment is confirmed at hire.

Safety

• Own safety performance for the plant. Lead entanglement, guarding, LOTO and pedestrian/PIT risk reviews line by line, and close findings on a dated plan.

• Treat every near miss as if it were an injury: investigate, root cause, correct, and share the learning across both plants.

• Maintain OSHA recordkeeping, contractor safety rules, powered industrial truck licensing, and the plant garment and PPE policy.

• Make safety the first item in every shift meeting and the first question in every incident review.

Food safety and quality

• Deliver product that meets specification the first time — GMPs, HACCP/preventive controls, SQF readiness, sanitation verification, and allergen control on every changeover.

• Respect release authority: Food Safety & Quality releases product and releases equipment after cleaning. Production does not release itself.

• Drive holds to disposition on a clock — no aged holds accumulating on the floor — and own corrective action for the losses that created them.

• Own weight control, fill accuracy and label/lot accuracy to spec, with verification recorded at the line.

• Own allergen and gluten-free control at the line: verified cleans, correct material cut-in, equipment release inspection, and no assumption that "close enough" is clean.

Production attainment and schedule discipline

• Operate to the published production schedule. Deviations are escalated to Planning and resolved through the plan — the schedule is not changed on the floor to cover a miss.

• Same-day escalation is non-negotiable: a line that goes down, runs short or runs off-standard is reported the day it happens, with the reason, the recovery plan and the ask.

• Confirm line readiness before every start: materials staged and verified, change parts on hand, crew assigned to skill, specs and centerlines at the line, and first-piece checks completed before the run is released.

• Protect first-shift start-up. Start-up losses are treated as a managed process with a setup technician and a technical supervisor accountable for a clean first hour, not as an accepted cost of doing business.

Lean and TPM

• Run the plant on a Lean/TPM operating system, not on firefighting: daily management by tier, standard work for supervisors and line leads, 5S, visual controls at the line, and a live OEE loss tree by line and by shift.

• Own the loss tree personally — planned losses (changeover, sanitation, PM, autonomous maintenance) separated from unplanned (breakdowns, process upsets, minor stops, material and QA loss, speed loss), in hours, percent and cases.

• Stand up autonomous maintenance and centerlining on the highest-loss assets: operator-owned cleaning, inspection and lubrication, defect tagging, and documented centerline settings by SKU.

• Drive changeover reduction (SMED) against a published changeover standard per transition class; hold the line on run order so allergen and specialty cleans are earned, not repeated.

• Lead structured problem solving on repeat losses — 5-why and A3 to true root cause, with countermeasures verified and standardized rather than closed on opinion.

• Commission new and relocated equipment properly — a documented start-up curve, run-rate qualification and sign-off before an asset is counted in the capacity plan.

People and organization

• Lead, coach and hold accountable a supervisor team covering two production shifts, with line leads on each line; delayer where supervision is over-indexed and build the leads underneath.

• Build supervisor capability through standard work, shift-handover discipline and documented daily routines; stop the pattern of promoting to supervisor before the person is ready and develop line leads as the bench.

• Own a skills matrix by line and position, and match people to lines by demonstrated skill each day — particularly important with a temp-heavy workforce.

• Lead day-one orientation, on-the-job qualification and certification for every operator, temp included, before they are counted as trained on a line.

• Administer the collective bargaining agreement fairly and consistently: attendance and start-time accountability, job bidding and assignment, grievance handling, and a working partnership with union leadership and HR.

• Hold the right people in the right seats — including union roles filled by union employees — and correct assignments that do not follow the agreement.

Capital, budget, OEE and capacity

• Own the CAPEX master plan for the site — a rolling multi-year capital plan by asset, ranked on quantified loss and capacity need, with scope, cost, payback and timing on every line.

• Sponsor capital projects end to end: justification, appropriation request, vendor selection, installation, commissioning, run-rate qualification and post-implementation review against the numbers that justified the spend.

• Own OEE as the operating measure of the plant — availability, performance and quality by line and by shift — with the loss tree underneath it and an improvement target on every major asset.

• Own the plant capacity model: demonstrated rates, crew requirements, changeover times, planned downtime and realistic line availability, kept current so Planning, S&OP and commercial commitments are made against capacity that actually exists.

• Give the capacity answer for new business — what the plant can take, at what rate, at what cost and by when — and stand behind it.

• Keep the capital list honest against maintenance reality — separate what is genuinely a capital need from what is deferred maintenance or a missing standard.

Commercialization, validation and training

• Facilitate commercialization for the site: plant trials, scale-up from R&D, first production runs, line trials and qualification of new items, new formats and new equipment.

• Own validation and verification at the plant — process validation, equipment qualification, cleaning and changeover validation, centerline and rate confirmation — before an item or an asset is released to routine production.

• Enforce the readiness gate: no new item goes on the schedule without a specification, a bill of materials, a standard rate, a crew requirement, a changeover plan and a trained crew.

• Ensure training is completed and documented for every person on the floor, permanent and temporary, before they are counted as qualified on a line — with training records current, verified and audit-ready.

• Partner with R&D, Quality and the commercial team so that a customer commitment is never made on a line that has not demonstrated the rate.

Cost and financial ownership

• Run the plant to budget. Own the annual operating budget, review variance monthly against labor, overtime, temp spend, supplies, scrap and maintenance, and bring a recovery plan wherever the plant is off.

• Own the plant cost lines you control: yield and scrap, direct and indirect labor, overtime, temp spend, supplies, and maintenance materials.

• Improve overhead absorption by running to schedule and to rate — the lever that recovers margin is demonstrated throughput, not price.

• Review a weekly cost and performance scorecard with the COO and act on the exceptions.

Systems, data and planning

• Provide clean, timely production every run opened and closed the day it runs, actual good units, actual scrap by reason code, and downtime captured at the line.

• Partner with Planning and Supply Chain so the MRP runs on real rates, real yields and real capacity — the plant owns the standards it is measured against.

• Keep standard rates, crew requirements, changeover times and batch cycle times current by line and by item, and challenge them with demonstrated performance.

• Support the rollout of planning and inventory systems as a user and an owner, not a bystander.

• Seven or more years in food manufacturing operations, including three or more years as a plant manager, operations manager or production manager with full accountability for a plant or a major department.

• Demonstrated Lean and TPM background — not a certificate, but plants and lines you personally improved. Be ready to walk us through a loss tree you built, the losses you attacked and what the numbers did.

• Working command of OEE, attainment, yield and scrap, standard rates, changeover analysis and capacity planning — you own these numbers, you do not receive them.

• Capital planning experience: building and defending a multi-year CAPEX plan, writing the justification, and delivering projects through commissioning and post-implementation review.

• Experience running a plant to an operating budget with monthly variance accountability.

• Commercialization experience — plant trials, scale-up, validation and qualification of new items and new equipment — and ownership of the training and certification that has to be complete before a line runs.

• Food plant manufacturing experience is required. Strong working knowledge of GMPs, HACCP or preventive controls, sanitation, allergen control and SQF or equivalent audit standards.

• Proven record of developing supervisors and front-line leaders, and of running a plant through standard work and daily management rather than personal heroics.

• Comfortable with the numbers: reads a plant P&L, builds an operating and capital plan, and justifies spend on quantified loss.

• Willing and able to flex hours to the needs of the business, including weekends, off-shifts and extended hours during seasonal peak and recovery periods.

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, food science, operations or a related field, or equivalent experience earned on the floor.

• Experience in a unionized plant, including administering a collective bargaining agreement and working constructively with union leadership.

• High-mix, high-changeover environments with allergen and gluten-free segregation requirements.

• Contract manufacturing or co-pack experience, where customer specifications and customer audits are part of daily life.

• Packaging line start-up and commissioning experience — form-fill-seal, pouch, tube, bottle or similar.

• Experience operating through an ERP or MRP implementation, or in a plant standing one up for the first time.

• Bilingual English/Spanish.

• The plant runs two production shifts with third-shift sanitation, and volume is seasonal with a heavy fall peak. The person in this role flexes their hours to the business — weekends, early starts, late finishes and off-shift presence when the schedule, a start-up or a recovery requires it.

• Expected to be visible across both shifts on a regular cadence, not first shift only.

• Regularly on the production floor: standing and walking for extended periods, climbing stairs and platforms, and occasional lifting to 35 lbs.

• Exposure to food manufacturing conditions — noise, moving equipment, powered industrial trucks, flour and sugar dust, heat at cook and fill stations, and cold storage.

• Full GMP compliance including hairnets, beard nets, hearing protection, safety footwear and the plant garment policy.

• This is an on-site role. Remote or hybrid work is not available.

• Weeks 1–2: on the floor across both shifts. Meet every supervisor and line lead, walk every line, and form your own read on safety, staffing, equipment condition and where the losses actually sit.

• Weeks 3–6: publish a loss tree by line and shift; set the daily management routine and shift-handover standard; confirm standard rates and crew requirements with Planning.

• Weeks 6–10: pick the two highest-loss assets and run a structured improvement on each, with before-and-after numbers.

• By day 90: an agreed attainment and yield recovery plan for the plant, a supervisor development plan by name, and a capital and maintenance list ranked by quantified loss.

Miss Jones Baking Co. and Decko are equal opportunity employers. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other protected characteristic.