Group Specialist: Production Management at Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) presents an exciting opportunity for an experienced Group Specialist: Production Management. This is a mid-level resource in the Manufacturing Optimisation department within Supply Chain Excellence. The incumbent is responsible for the development, coordination and support of improvement programmes aimed at improving plant throughput and overall performance on all CCBA production lines.

The successful applicant will be reporting into the Group Lead: Manufacturing Optimisation.

This position could be based anywhere in the geographic footprint of CCBA, and the incumbent will be responsible for the effective deployment of Production Management strategies, measured through KPI performance, in line with the CCBA Game Plan.

CCBA is the largest African Coca-Cola bottler, accounting for 40% of all Coca-Cola volumes on the continent. CCBA is a Non Alcoholic Ready to Drink (NARTD) market leader with an extensive footprint in Africa, employing over 17,000 employees and serving a combined population of over 300 million people across the continent.

CCBA’s vision is to “refresh Africa every day and make the continent a better place for all”, growing successfully as a business and creating a better-shared future for our people, customers, consumers, communities, planet and shareholders. We conduct ourselves with the utmost integrity for shared value and the greater good. We are a world class, customer-orientated, socially and environmentally conscious fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that is driven by engaged, motivated and inspired employees.

The Group Specialist: Production Management plays a leading role in ensuring deployment of all Group Production Management Strategies for all plants and all aspects of production optimisation. The incumbent is responsible for ensuring the development and effective deployment of policies, frameworks, key guidelines as well as the governance thereof. The incumbent uses specialist knowledge to ensure compliance to Production, Process and Engineering Standards.

The Group Specialist: Production Management interacts, collaborates and consults with Manufacturing Directors, Packaging Managers, Packaging Engineers, Unit Managers, Centre of Excellence, Community of Practice Leads, TCCC/AOU Specialists, and other stakeholders.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

• Driving the attainment of high, step change and continuous improvement performance within CCBA.
• Defining the long-range Plan focus areas for Production/Packaging operations in line with the strategy.
• Driving the consolidation of group reports, while ensuring that poor performance is addressed through a high degree of accountability management.
• Driving the governance requirements in Production and ensures adherence to operations best practice minimum requirements.
• Developing, deploying and ensuring effectiveness of Packaging Management strategy, policies and all supporting frameworks.
• Driving the strategic alignment with the CCBA Game Plan and with other functions.
• Strategically driving the optimization of yields and productivity improvement in production and packaging.
• Continuously reviewing the effectiveness and relevance of policies, strategies and frameworks for all plants.
• Providing annual budget guidelines to drive a step-change in performance and productivity improvement.
• Monitoring and supporting the implementation of the 3-year Operational excellence Master Plan.
• Facilitating benchmarking to improve Machine Efficiency (ME), unconstrained system line efficiency (USLE), yields/ usages and other relevant plant KPI’s and ensure relevant support for Focus Improvement (FI) initiatives flowing from benchmarking.
• Supporting CoE in establishing CoPs to optimize MCC and Efficiencies.
• Collaborating with CoE to codify best practices and BWPs.
• Driving the development of all necessary BWPs and other tactical documents in collaboration with the CoE and CoP leads.
• Monitoring the effectiveness of tactics and strategies as measured in KPI performance and maturity improvement.
• Providing CoE with guidance on focus areas/countries, in collaboration with the country management teams and the Head of SC Excellence.
• Supporting the implementation of KO driven initiatives related to production and packaging management.
• Ensuring horizontal alignment on and optimization across the value chain.
• Driving global and local benchmarking and the implementation of emerging best practices.
• Forging relationships with other CCBA functions and encourage cross-functional collaboration.
• Collaborating with CoE to pilot new technology and ensure effective development and deployment.
• Managing strategic relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original component manufacturers (OCMs) for training on operating and maintaining CCBA technology.
• Leveraging the CCBA resources, especially the CoE, to support countries to resolve major technical gaps, as it relates to the capability to do the work locally.

Skills, Experience & Education

Qualifications:

The minimum qualification required for this job is a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering. Or a Technical Bachelor’s Degree in Science.

Further development in Production Management will be an added advantage.

Experience:

• 8+ years’ experience in Production Management Operations or in the Centre of Excellence.
• 5+ of which should be at a middle management or COE Specialist level.
• Deep understanding of Production / packaging / manufacturing Management processes, principles and strategies.
• A fair appreciation of the application of the SC Ways of work or similar methodologies based on TPM / WCM or Lean Six Sigma within a manufacturing environment.
• Experience running a production Line or Plant within the FMCG industry.
• Proven track record in Continuous Improvement and step-change performance improvement in manufacturing operations.
• Corporate (HQ) experience will be an added advantage.