Plant Head/Director - Operations - Natural Extracts/Nutraceuticals/Food/Pharma Industry - IIM/NITIE/IRMA/ISB/MDI/JBIMS

Core responsibilities:

- As senior member of the core team, responsible for running day-to-day commercial operations including production, supply chain, logistics functions.

- Accountable for meeting production and commercial delivery targets for the business.

Production planning:

- Develop the production plan along with sales and marketing team and build the monthly / quarterly production plans.

- Plan and ensure availability of all critical RM/PM for the planned production schedule

Manufacturing:

- Manage the production at the manufacturing facility (third party / own)

- Manage the modifications, new equipment commissioning, technology upgrades at the manufacturing facility

- Ensure all the defined process flow and critical process parameters are followed during the production

- Review and sign off on all BMR (batch manufacturing records) and other production related documents

- To ensure supply as per the schedule from the third-party manufacturing sites

- Consistently achieve the targets and benchmarks set for efficiency, yields, capacity utilization etc

- Co-ordinate the logistics for storage, movement of RM, FG etc

- Handle all purchase, POs, invoicing, payments etc related to the production

Plant set up:

- Set up greenfield / brownfield project - identification of sites, work engineering companies, equipment manufacturers and other vendors to commission new greenfield / brownfield project for new plant / machinery set up for commercial production.

- Identifying manufacturing plants, carry out modifications needed, technical feasibility, production trials and commissioning 3P / own manufacturing plant.

NPD, Scale up, Tech transfer:

- Support R&D team for process scale up and technology transfer from R&D/pilot stage to commercial stage

- Work with R&D team to develop tech transfer protocols and SOPs

- Co-ordinate with manufacturing sites to ensure all necessary equipment, utilities are available for R&D for process scale up & tech transfer

- Suggest modifications, improvements to the equipment, process to achieve better throughputs, efficiency, capacity etc

Technical support:

- Give technical support / feedback to R&D on future process improvements

- Suggest ways to improve yields, process cycle times, reduce in-process wastages, costs etc

- Responsible for timely trouble shooting of manufacturing issues

QA / QC:

- Handle the QA / QC related processes to ensure the right quality, documentation etc followed at each step

- Ensure all defined processes are followed and records maintained for sample testing, stability studies, analytical testing etc

- Monitor Quality Management System of the sites & to ensure compliance as per the defined standards.

Audit / Compliances:

- Support any customer, regulatory etc audits at the production site

- Handle the certification process for Kosher, Halal, Organic etc at the identified sites

- Ensure all required compliances are in place

- To ensure that all activities of production are carried out in compliance with cGMP and safety guidelines

Requirements:

Education qualification: BE (Chemical / Mechanical) from top engineering colleges such as IITs, NITs, ICT (Mumbai) + MBA in Operations Management (preferable, not must) from top institutes such as IIMs (Regular / Agri MBA), NITIE, IRMA, ISB, MDI, JBIMS etc

Experience: 10-15 years of experience in operations, production management in natural extracts / nutraceuticals / food / pharma industry

Skills & Other requirements:

- Should have worked on process scale up as well as managing commercial production

- Knowledge about technologies & equipment used in production and good in engineering aspects related to production management.

- Demonstrates initiative, results orientation and ability to operate independently taking key decisions and driving the operations function

Travel: Frequent travel to manufacturing sites.