Work Environment & Schedule:
The position is based on a high-volume, temperature-controlled food manufacturing facility with approximately 120 employees and three production shifts. Regular production floor presence is required, with exposure to temperature extremes, wet/slippery floors, noise, moving machinery, steam, compressed air, chemicals, and refrigeration systems. The Maintenance Manager must be flexible to work occasional nights, weekends, holidays, and emergency call-ins to support 24/7 operations. The successful candidate will lead from the floor, build a technically strong and accountable maintenance team, prioritize permanent solutions over temporary fixes, use data to drive decisions, and maintain a safety first and food safety first culture while balancing immediate production needs with long-term reliability. Direct Reports: Maintenance Supervisors, Technicians, Mechanics, Electricians, and/or Maintenance Leads. Key Partners: Operations, Production, Quality, Food Safety, Sanitation, Engineering, Warehouse, Purchasing, and HR. Maximize plant equipment reliability and production uptime while maintaining the highest standards of employee safety, food safety, regulatory compliance, quality, and cost control.
Position Summary
The Maintenance Manager leads all maintenance activities for a high-volume, 24/7 fully cooked meat manufacturing facility operating across three shifts. The role is responsible for maximizing equipment uptime, reliability, safety, sanitation, regulatory compliance, and cost efficiency.
This hands-on leader will manage the maintenance team, preventive and predictive maintenance programs, equipment repairs, contractors, projects, spare parts, and budget while partnering closely with Operations, Quality, Food Safety, Sanitation, Engineering, and other departments.
Responsibilities:
- Team Leadership: Lead, coach, schedule, and develop a multi-shift maintenance team; establish accountability, performance standards, training, and coverage.
- Preventive/Predictive Maintenance: Develop and improve PM programs, monitor completion and effectiveness, maintain equipment records, and use condition-monitoring techniques to prevent failures.
- Reliability & Production Support: Maximize uptime, respond to breakdowns, troubleshoot equipment, lead root-cause analysis, eliminate recurring failures, and support equipment installations and commissioning.
- Food Safety & Sanitation: Ensure maintenance practices comply with GMPs, HACCP, sanitation requirements, USDA/FDA regulations, and food-safety standards. Control contamination risks associated with maintenance activities.
- Safety & Compliance: Maintain a strong safety culture and ensure OSHA, LOTO, hot work, confined space, electrical, fall protection, and contractor safety requirements are followed.
- Electrical, Controls & Automation: Support troubleshooting and maintenance of PLCs, HMIs, VFDs, motors, sensors, control panels, and automated production systems.
- Facility & Utilities: Oversee reliability of boilers/steam, refrigeration, compressed air, HVAC, water/wastewater, electrical distribution, natural gas, fire protection, process utilities, infrastructure, and backup power systems.
- Parts & Inventory: Maintain critical spare-parts inventories, establish stocking levels, control usage, and manage supplier relationships.
- Budget & Cost Control: Manage maintenance spending, labor, parts, contractors, and outside services; identify cost-saving opportunities and support capital expenditure decisions.
- Contractors & Vendors: Manage service providers and vendors, obtain quotes, coordinate projects and repairs, and ensure compliance with site requirements.
- Continuous Improvement: Use downtime and maintenance data to improve reliability, efficiency, labor utilization, energy consumption, and throughput. Support Lean, TPM, 5S, and reliability initiatives.
Requirements:
- Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Industrial Technology, Maintenance Management, or related field, or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of progressive manufacturing maintenance experience.
- 5+ years of maintenance leadership/management experience.
- Strong mechanical and electrical troubleshooting skills.
- Experience with PM/predictive maintenance programs.
- Knowledge of PLCs, VFDs, motors, sensors, pneumatics, hydraulics, and automated equipment.
- Strong knowledge of OSHA and LOTO requirements.
- Proven problem-solving, root-cause analysis, leadership, communication, and organizational skills.
- Ability to lead a multi-shift team and collaborate across Production, Quality, Food Safety, Sanitation, Engineering, and senior leadership.
Preferred:
- Food, meat, poultry, prepared foods, or ready-to-eat manufacturing experience.
- USDA/FDA, HACCP, GMP, sanitation, and environmental-control knowledge.
- CMMS experience.
- Lean, TPM, or reliability-centered maintenance experience.
- Industrial refrigeration, steam/boiler, compressed air, or wastewater experience.
- Electrical/mechanical certifications.
- Capital project and major equipment installation experience.
