Mill Assistant Manager
Posted Updated
Assistant Mill Manager is responsible for maintaining the daily milling operations and managing mill personnel.
Requirements:
Key Responsibilities
1. Environmental, Health, & Safety (EHS) Compliance
- Training & Onboarding: Ensure all mill employees are fully trained on critical safety procedures, including Lockout/Tagout (LOTO), confined space entry, and working at heights.
- Safety Enforcement: Oversee the strict usage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and adherence to company safety policies across all shifts, including nights and weekends.
- Operational Safety: Verify that LOTO protocols are executed flawlessly for all maintenance work, as well as during the clearing of equipment jams or chokes.
- Hazard Mitigation: Maintain strict control over combustible dust accumulation on floors, walls, and equipment; verify the continuous, correct functionality of dust collection systems.
- Incident Management: Investigate every workplace incident and near-miss, root-cause the failure, and confirm all corrective actions are completed.
- Inspections & Audits: Verify that all equipment guards and lids are properly secured daily. Conduct and document a comprehensive physical safety walk of the mill at least weekly.
2. Quality Control & Food Safety
- Quality Assurance: Ensure all finished, milled rice meets rigid customer specifications and Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) grades regarding brokens, chalk, color, and foreign material.
- Data-Driven Adjustments: Review Quality Control (QC) lab results with millers at the start of each shift and proactively act on out-of-spec trends.
- Food Safety Controls: Verify that physical contamination controls—including weekly magnet checks—are performed and documented.
- Sanitation & Regulatory Standards: Enforce Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and strict food safety policies covering hygiene, glass/brittle plastics, and foreign material prevention.
- Hold Procedures: Identify, segregate, and clearly communicate any out-of-spec or on-hold product to the QC department immediately.
- Pest Management: Perform and document a weekly insect tracking report. Report any pest activity to Pest Control vendors immediately and drive prompt resolution.
- Audit Readiness: Actively support third-party food safety and customer quality audits, ensuring all corrective findings are closed out on time.
3. Production Efficiency & Yield Optimization
- Throughput Optimization: Meet or exceed the established milling schedule and daily production targets while maintaining maximum milling capacity.
- Yield Management: Continuously track head rice yield and total milling yield; immediately implement corrective operational strategies when yields fall below targets.
- Process Controls: Perform a daily milling ratio check and make calculated adjustments to equipment configurations as required.
- Equipment Calibration: Keep all milling settings—including hullers, whiteners, polishers, sorters, and graders—tightly optimized for each specific rice variety and customer specification.
- Impurities Extraction: Inspect cleaning equipment receptacles regularly to verify that impurities and foreign matter are being properly removed from the stream.
- Changeover Management: Systematically manage changeovers between different varieties and customers to minimize operational downtime and prevent product commingling.
- Continuous Improvement: Track, categorize, and document all system downtime by cause; leverage data to identify production bottlenecks and drive targeted engineering or operational solutions.
Qualifications & Skills
- Experience: Proven leadership experience in a production supervisor within a grain milling, food manufacturing, or agricultural processing facility (Rice milling experience highly preferred).
- Technical Knowledge: Deep understanding of mechanical milling equipment (hullers, whiteners, color sorters) and the factors affecting head rice yield.
- Regulations: Strong knowledge of OSHA safety standards (specifically LOTO and combustible dust management) and food safety regulations (GMP, HACCP, or SQF).
- Leadership: Exceptional communication skills with the ability to manage and motivate cross-functional millers and technicians across rotating shifts.
- Problem Solving: Analytically minded with a focus on data-driven troubleshooting for quality trends and mechanical bottlenecks.