Senior Vice President of Manufacturing

The Sr. Vice President of Manufacturing is a senior operating leader responsible for the safety, quality, productivity, and profitability of Tulkoff's manufacturing network. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, this role provides strategic and operational leadership across Tulkoff's Cincinnati, Toronto, and Baltimore manufacturing facilities, working through a team of Site Directors to standardize best practices, drive continuous improvement, and scale capacity to meet growing customer demand. The Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Manager also reports to this role, reflecting the SVP of Manufacturing's accountability for building and sustaining a strong safety culture across every site.

This is a highly visible, hands-on leadership role for an experienced manufacturing executive who can balance strategic, multi-site vision with the discipline to be on the plant floor solving problems alongside site teams. The successful candidate will bring deep expertise in food manufacturing operations, a track record of developing high-performing leaders, and a passion for building a world-class safety and quality culture.

Manufacturing Strategy & Multi-Site Leadership

• Set the strategic direction for Tulkoff's manufacturing network across Cincinnati, Toronto, and Baltimore, translating company growth and commercial goals into an integrated manufacturing plan.
• Lead, coach, and hold accountable the three Site Directors, ensuring each facility operates against clear performance targets for safety, quality, delivery, and cost.
• Standardize manufacturing processes, KPIs, and reporting cadences across sites while allowing for local flexibility where warranted by product mix or customer requirements.
• Represent manufacturing on the senior leadership team, partnering with the COO and peer executives to shape company-wide strategy, capital investment, and network capacity planning.
• Evaluate and lead network capacity decisions, including capital projects, line additions, automation investments, and potential new-site or expansion planning.

Environmental, Health & Safety

• Own the overall safety performance and culture of the manufacturing network; provide direct leadership and support to the EHS Manager in developing and executing the EHS strategy.
• Ensure all sites maintain compliance with applicable regulations, including OSHA requirements in the U.S. and equivalent occupational health and safety regulations in Canada, as well as environmental permitting and reporting obligations.
• Champion a proactive, employee-driven safety culture, including behavior-based safety programs, incident investigation and root-cause analysis, and consistent corrective action follow-through.
• Review leading and lagging safety indicators (e.g., near misses, TRIR, LTIR) across all sites and drive accountability for continuous improvement in safety outcomes.

Quality & Food Safety

• Partner with Quality and Food Safety leadership to ensure every facility maintains and exceeds GFSI-benchmarked certification standards (e.g., SQF), HACCP plans, and customer/regulatory audit expectations.
• Ensure Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), sanitation programs, and food defense protocols are consistently followed across all shifts and sites.
• Support root-cause investigation and corrective/preventive action (CAPA) for quality and food safety deviations, driving sites toward zero-defect performance.

Continuous Improvement & Operational Excellence

• Deploy Lean, Six Sigma, and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) principles to improve throughput, reduce waste, and lower total manufacturing cost across the network.
• Establish a common operating system across sites, including standard work, visual management, tiered daily accountability meetings, and structured problem solving.
• Lead or sponsor major process improvement and automation initiatives, tracking benefits realization against business case commitments.

Financial & Capital Management

• Own the manufacturing network's operating budget, partnering with Finance and Site Directors to plan, monitor, and deliver against cost, labor, and productivity targets.
• Develop and prioritize the capital expenditure plan across sites, ensuring investments are aligned to growth, reliability, safety, and quality priorities.
• Identify and deliver cost-reduction and margin-improvement opportunities without compromising safety or quality.

Talent Development & People Leadership

• Build a strong bench of manufacturing leadership talent, with particular focus on developing the Site Director team and their succession pipelines.
• Foster a consistent, values-based culture across all sites that reinforces Tulkoff's commitment to customer focus, teamwork, and continuous development.
• Lead workforce planning across the network, including labor strategy, staffing models, and (where applicable) union or labor relations matters.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with Supply Chain, Procurement, R&D/Innovation, Sales, and Quality to ensure manufacturing capabilities align with new product launches, demand planning, and customer commitments.
• Serve as an escalation point for cross-site operational issues, ensuring timely resolution and clear communication to the COO and broader leadership team.