Lead Operator - Days

As a lead member of the team you will be supporting the production or supply chain team on the site you are based in the planning, coordination and optimization of all resources in a defined area of work.  You will be the go-to person in the team for support, using your coordination skills you will ensure operational activities are completed and the highest standards of safety, product quality and service levels are delivered to enable the whole team to deliver our fantastic products to our customers. 

Working with the teams in an area and the wider site team, you will ensure that the team are able to work productively and effectively. Through the coordination of resources across multiple assets and completing performance improvement meetings on the lines, you will ensure optimal utilization of our assets and the optimal use of raw materials.  

Key responsibilities:

• Demonstrating a commitment to Health & Safety by working in a safe manner, role modelling our safety behaviors, challenging unsafe practices, rectifying unsafe conditions and escalating to other team members when support is needed.
• Leading the active involvement of the teams in all Health & Safety aspects of their work to support the ongoing improvement to safety practices.
• Escalating any food safety breach or quality issue and ensure that any product below our standards is identified and held and the issues are escalated appropriately, resolved and released.
• Active involvement, commitment and governance of the quality management system, making sure all relevant controls and procedures are completed effectively to validate food safety controls and the products we make exceed customer and consumer expectations.
• Understanding, leading and maintaining good manufacturing practices and company standards of hygiene, PPE, and dress code.
• Role models a 'Clean as You Go' approach, leading workplace organisation and visual management standards with the team.
• With support from and working with the Technical team, understand audit non conformances and consumer complaints and work together to manage communications with the team, putting in place actions to prevent reoccurrence.
• Leading the facilitation of Short Interval Control Reviews, establishing actions and owners for the ongoing improvements and coordination of task and resource to optimise the operation.
• Analyses and interprets asset performance to establish areas of opportunity and initiates the necessary support to drive improvements to performance and raw material yields.
• Active involvements in changeover optimsation with the team, identifying areas of opportunity and resource coordination that improve asset utilisation.
• Communicates and shares performance data and ensures team awareness and connection of how their role contributes to the success of the shift, site and business.
• Maintains the accurate and timely recording of downtime and raw material usage across the area in support of focused improvement initiatives.
• Undertake basic fault finding and rectification on equipment and actively support the identification of root cause when escalating to the wider support team when required.
• Ensuring all equipment is properly cared for through the layered validation of the cleaning tasks and the compliance to the schedule.
• Train and validate understanding to the highest standard, coaching and mentoring others to build capability. 
• Collate, suggest, initiate and implement improvement activities within own team and outside of team across all shifts 
• Work across the team and effective handovers to understand common challenges and opportunities seeking to identify where investigations may help most.
• Energises the team and demonstrates a consistently enthusiastic approach, taking action quickly and encouraging others to do the same.

Essential:

• Good team working skills
• Able to undertake manual tasks
• Attention to Detail
• Effective Communication

Desirable:

• Basic food hygiene
• Knowledge of HACCP
• Relevant work experience as a machine Operator in a production environment

We’re independent, British and proud to be making the highest quality yogurts, desserts and ice cream under the Yeo Valley brand and for many of the UK’s major retailers. Operating from four dairies and two logistics centres in Somerset and Devon, we employ over 1700 staff and produce more than 25% of the UK’s packaged yogurt.

We’re sure you don’t need convincing, but there’s a whole host of benefits that we offer including:

• competitive holiday allowance
• non-contributory pension scheme
• life cover
• healthcare cash back plan
• cycle to work scheme
• subsidised Yeo Valley products and services
• preferential rates with our partners
• learning and development opportunities; we’re committed to ensuring all of our employees have the chance to grow

Our closing dates are a guide for when the application window should close, although we may close the advert sooner if we can. So, we recommend you get your application in straight away – and don’t miss the opportunity to join us!

Unfortunately, we’re not able to provide employment sponsorship to candidates at this moment in time.

Please note that Yeo Valley do not accept speculative agency applications; we will only accept applications from preferred suppliers that have been submitted to us via our recruitment portal at the point of instruction.