Production Manager (Dairy Technologist)

Role Overview

The Production Manager (Dairy Technologist) will oversee dairy manufacturing from raw milk intake through finished goods dispatch. This position focuses on planning, controlling, and improving production activities so that output, quality, safety, and cost targets are consistently met.

Production Planning and Control

You will build daily, weekly, and monthly production schedules aligned to business demand, then coordinate with procurement, stores, maintenance, logistics, and sales to keep operations running smoothly. The role also involves managing plant capacity, balancing line loading, reducing lead times, and ensuring dispatch readiness without interruption.

Raw Milk Receiving and Processing

Responsibility includes supervising the full milk receiving flow, confirming quantity and quality at intake, overseeing unloading, chilling, and storage, and managing milk transfer and balancing. Key process stages such as reception, clarification, standardization, pasteurization, homogenization, separation, and storage must be controlled to keep losses to a minimum.

Dairy Manufacturing Operations

The role covers production control for a wide range of dairy items, including liquid milk variants, curd, buttermilk, lassi, paneer, butter, ghee, cream, ice cream mix, yogurt, dairy whitener, and cheese wherever applicable. Product making must follow approved formulas, with batch traceability maintained at all times.

Process Control and Efficiency

This position requires monitoring key process parameters and maintaining consistent product quality. You will work to improve temperature, flow, pressure, holding time, yield, and cycle time performance, while reducing variation, bottlenecks, downtime, waste, and overall losses. Improving OEE is also part of the role.

Food Safety and Quality Compliance

The Production Manager must ensure manufacturing follows food safety requirements and accepted systems such as GMP, GHP, HACCP, ISO 22000, and FSSC 22000. The role includes CCP monitoring, coordination with QA for product release, upkeep of hygiene standards, and consistent product quality across the plant.

Plant Operations and Maintenance Coordination

You will supervise day-to-day processing plant operations and ensure effective use of machinery, utilities, materials, and manpower. The position also requires coordination with engineering and maintenance teams for preventive and breakdown maintenance, along with reliable support for boilers, chillers, air compressors, water systems, refrigeration, electrical systems, and steam systems.

Cost, Yield, Packaging, and Inventory Control

The job includes tracking manufacturing costs, controlling milk loss, utility usage, packaging and chemical consumption, and labour cost, while improving conversion efficiency and staying within budget. You will also monitor fat and SNF losses, product rework, spillages, and other processing losses, and oversee packaging accuracy, seal integrity, coding, batch control, and product appearance. Inventory of packaging materials, ingredients, chemicals, consumables, and work-in-progress must be planned and monitored closely with stores support.

Reporting, Leadership, and Improvement

Regular production documentation must be maintained, including daily and shift reports, yield and downtime reports, material and utility consumption records, KPI tracking, batch manufacturing records, and traceability logs. The role also involves leading supervisors and operators, allocating manpower by shift, reviewing performance, arranging training, and running shift meetings. Continuous improvement, lean initiatives, Kaizen activities, automation opportunities, and process capability enhancement are important parts of the position.

Safety, NPD, and Audit Support

You will support health, safety, and environmental compliance by promoting safe work practices, PPE usage, risk assessment, and incident investigation. The role also supports trial runs, product scale-up, SOP development, and coordination with R&D and QA for new product work. In addition, you will assist internal, external, certification, and customer audits, and close observations through proper compliance documentation.

Preferred Profile

The ideal candidate can manage end-to-end dairy production operations with a strong focus on safety, quality, productivity, regulatory compliance, and cost control. The role demands a hands-on leader who can drive production targets, process optimization, manpower management, and efficient plant utilization.

Key Performance Indicators

• Production achievement percentage
• Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
• Yield efficiency
• Milk loss percentage
• Downtime percentage
• Utility cost per litre
• Product rejection percentage
• Labour productivity
• On-time completion of production