Description:
Position Overview
The Plant Controller is the senior finance leader for the manufacturing facility and a key business partner to plant leadership. This role is responsible for the integrity of plant financial reporting, cost accounting, inventory controls, budgeting and forecasting, performance analysis, and financial controls. The Plant Controller translates operational activity into clear financial insight and helps leaders understand the cost, margin, labor, yield, waste, and productivity implications of business decisions.
In a food manufacturing environment, the successful candidate will combine strong accounting discipline with a hands-on understanding of plant operations. The role works closely with Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, FSQA, Engineering/Maintenance, Human Resources, and corporate Finance to improve profitability, strengthen controls, and support safe, reliable, efficient production.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own plant-level financial reporting, month-end close, account reconciliations, journal entries, accruals, and variance analysis; ensure timely and accurate results in accordance with company policy and applicable accounting standards.
- Lead plant budgeting, forecasting, and periodic outlook processes, including labor, overhead, materials, production volumes, capital spending, and operating expenses.
- Maintain and improve standard costing, including bills of material, routings, labor and overhead rates, purchase price variance, material usage, yield, scrap, waste, and manufacturing variances.
- Analyze plant performance and convert financial and operational data into actionable insights for plant leadership; identify trends, risks, root causes, and opportunities.
- Partner with Operations to improve productivity, conversion cost, labor utilization, throughput, yield, waste reduction, and overall plant profitability.
- Oversee inventory accounting and controls, including raw materials, packaging, work-in-process, finished goods, cycle counts, physical inventories, reserves, adjustments, and inventory accuracy.
- Establish and maintain effective internal controls over plant financial processes, assets, inventory, purchasing, capital expenditures, and other areas of financial risk.
- Support capital expenditure requests and post-investment reviews through financial modeling, ROI/payback analysis, project tracking, and validation of expected benefits.
- Prepare and communicate plant KPIs and management reporting, including cost per unit/pound/case, labor efficiency, material usage, yield, waste, overhead absorption, inventory, and spending performance.
- Partner with Procurement and Supply Chain on commodity, ingredient, packaging, freight, and supplier cost analysis and the financial implications of sourcing decisions.
- Support new product introductions, customer/product profitability analysis, make-versus-buy decisions, pricing inputs, and other business cases as needed.
- Coordinate plant support for internal and external audits and ensure documentation, reconciliations, and controls are audit-ready.
- Ensure appropriate segregation of duties and compliance with corporate policies, financial procedures, and approval authorities.
- Develop finance capability within the plant; provide coaching and financial acumen to operational leaders and supervise plant accounting staff where applicable.
- Participate actively on the plant leadership team and contribute to continuous improvement, Lean, productivity, and cost-reduction initiatives.
Requirements:
Preferred Qualifications
- 5-8+ years of progressive accounting and finance experience, with meaningful experience in manufacturing.
- Food, beverage, consumer packaged goods, or other high-volume/process manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
- Strong plant cost accounting experience, including standard costing, inventory, manufacturing variances, labor and overhead analysis, and margin analysis.
- Demonstrated experience partnering directly with plant operations and influencing decisions through financial analysis.
- Experience with annual budgeting, forecasting, month-end close, internal controls, and financial reporting.
- Working knowledge of ERP and manufacturing systems; experience with systems such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, JD Edwards, or similar platforms is preferred.
- Advanced Excel and financial modeling skills; experience with business intelligence/reporting tools is a plus.
- Experience in a regulated food manufacturing environment and familiarity with food safety, traceability, inventory controls, and production processes is highly preferred
- Experience with union shops preferred
- Experience with multi-shift production preferred
- Supervisory or team leadership experience preferred.
Educational Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, or a closely related field required.
- CPA, CMA, MBA, or other relevant advanced credential preferred.
- Equivalent combinations of education and directly relevant manufacturing finance experience may be considered where appropriate.
Key Competencies
Business Partnership: Builds credibility with plant leaders and uses financial insight to improve operational and business decisions.
Manufacturing & Cost Acumen: Understands how materials, labor, yield, waste, throughput, overhead, inventory, and production decisions affect financial performance.
Financial Rigor: Maintains high standards for accuracy, controls, reconciliations, reporting, and accounting discipline.
Analytical Thinking: Moves beyond reporting results to identify drivers, patterns, root causes, risks, and opportunities.
Operational Orientation: Is comfortable on the plant floor, learns how the operation works, and connects financial information to real production activity.
Communication & Influence: Explains financial information clearly to non-financial leaders and constructively challenges assumptions when needed.
Ownership & Accountability: Takes responsibility for deadlines, data integrity, controls, and follow-through.
Continuous Improvement: Looks for better ways to simplify processes, improve controls, reduce cost, and increase the usefulness of financial information.
Collaboration: Works effectively across Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, Procurement, FSQA, Engineering, HR, and other functions.
Judgment & Integrity: Handles confidential information appropriately and demonstrates sound judgment, objectivity, and professional ethics.
What the Successful Candidate Will Bring
The successful Plant Controller will be more than the person who closes the books. They will be a visible, trusted business partner who understands what is happening on the plant floor and can connect operational decisions to financial outcomes. They will bring intellectual curiosity, strong financial discipline, and the confidence to ask the right questions while maintaining productive relationships across the organization.
- A hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves approach and comfort working in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
- The ability to turn complex plant data into a concise story: what happened, why it happened, what it means, and what should happen next.
- A strong command of cost accounting combined with genuine interest in operations, not just accounting transactions.
- A proactive mindset - someone who identifies issues early, follows them through to root cause, and helps the team build sustainable solutions.
- Credibility and presence with plant leadership, along with the ability to appropriately challenge decisions using facts and sound business judgment.
- A commitment to accuracy, controls, continuous improvement, and building a financially disciplined culture without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
Job Advertisement Summary
We are seeking a Plant Controller who wants to be close to the business and make a measurable impact. As the finance leader for our food manufacturing facility, you will partner with plant leadership to understand performance, improve cost and margin visibility, strengthen financial controls, and help turn operational data into better business decisions. This is an ideal opportunity for a manufacturing finance professional who enjoys both the rigor of accounting and the pace of plant operations - someone equally comfortable analyzing a manufacturing variance, walking the production floor, challenging an assumption, and helping leaders determine what to do next.
