Stemmler’s Meats & Cheese is an award-winning business with a deep tradition of supporting the local community and their farming families, where quality, innovation and great customer service have been key to our success.
We are proud of our past and are very excited about our future!
Our business has grown significantly over the last few years with the addition of our Waterloo meat processing facility. This expansion and the significant growth in co-packing opportunities have created the need for an experienced, customer-focused, hands-on Operations Director, Manufacturing to oversee and manage daily plant operations. The successful candidate will bring strong leadership, change management, planning, organizing, coordinating and problem-solving skills that will enable Stemmler’s to meet and exceed their organizational goals and objectives.
Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the Operations Director, Manufacturing will play a key role in executing and strengthening the structure of the plant by building clear accountability, improving communication between departments, supporting frontline leaders, and helping the business move to a more disciplined and scalable manufacturing system.
This is a new, hands-on leadership position suited for someone who is also comfortable being present on the production floor, working directly with supervisors, lead hands, operators, packaging, maintenance, QA, and planning to ensure production is completed safely, efficiently, and to specification.
The salary range for this position is $100,000 to $120,000 plus benefits.
Key Responsibilities
Daily Manufacturing Execution
- Oversee daily production and packaging activities to ensure daily production and packaging activities are completed on time, safely, efficiently, and accurately.
- Maintain a strong presence on the production floor to support supervisors, lead hands, and operators.
- Ensure production priorities and deliverables are clearly communicated and understood.
- Monitor and ensure appropriate labour allocation, line readiness, material availability, equipment constraints, and production flow throughout the day.
- Identify and resolve issues quicky.
- Ensure production records, yields, downtime notes, and key operating information are completed accurately and consistently.
- Support the daily integration of activities between planning, production, packaging, QA, sanitation, maintenance, and shipping.
People Leadership
- Build and foster a high performing operation team.
- Lead, coach, and develop supervisors, lead hands, operators, and general labour staff.
- Build accountability at the supervisor and lead hand level.
- Set clear expectations for attendance, performance, communication, conduct, productivity, team and quality of work standards.
- Support hiring, onboarding, training, and performance management initiatives and activities.
- Help create a stronger leadership pipeline within the plant by identifying and developing high-potential team members.
- Promote a respectful, practical, customer-service, safety oriented and solutions-focused floor culture.
- Ensure employees understand not only what needs to be done, but why it matters.
Production Planning and Scheduling Support
- Work closely with Operations, Production Planning, Procurement, Packaging, and Sales to ensure production schedules are realistic and executable.
- Provide practical feedback on labour needs, equipment constraints, product sequencing, changeovers, sanitation requirements, and capacity limitations.
- Help identify scheduling challenges in advance, including material shortages, staffing gaps, equipment conflicts, or unrealistic timelines.
- Support improved production flow between raw processing, smokehouse usage, cooling, slicing, packaging, and finished goods staging.
- Assist in building and implementing better planning practices as the business grows.
Food Safety, Quality, and Compliance
- Ensure production is completed in accordance with CFIA, SQF, HACCP, GMP, allergen control, sanitation, and internal quality requirements.
- Work collaboratively with QA to resolve issues while maintaining practical production flow.
- Reinforce proper documentation, lot control, traceability, product handling, and sanitation practices.
- Ensure non-conforming product holds, rework, and deviations are handled properly and escalated when needed.
- Support a culture where food safety and production are aligned rather than treated as competing priorities.
Labour, Efficiency, and Continuous Improvement
- Monitor labour usage, throughput, waste, yields, downtime, rework, and other manufacturing performance indicators.
- Identify opportunities to improve productivity, reduce waste, improve line balance, and strengthen process consistency to provide a significant and advancement in infrastructure capability.
- Support standard work development for key production and packaging processes.
- Recommend and implement practical improvements in workflow, equipment use, staffing models, training, and communication.
- Work with maintenance to reduce equipment issues and improve production reliability.
- Support new product launches, customer trials, process changes, and scale-up activities.
Cross-Functional Communication
- Act as a key link between the production floor and leadership.
- Communicate daily operating issues clearly and factually.
- Participate in production, operations, maintenance, QA, and leadership meetings.
- Ensure decisions and initiatives made by leadership are implemented.
- Escalate risks and concerns early with recommended solutions, not just problems.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years manufacturing leadership experience in food, meat processing, CPG, or another regulated manufacturing environment.
- Strong hands-on floor leadership experience.
- Continuous improvement mindset with demonstrated experience leading and implementing change management initiatives.
- Strong understanding of production flow, labour planning, scheduling, equipment utilization, and daily production and execution.
- Experience improving labour efficiency, throughput, yields, downtime and production reporting.
- Comfortable working in a fast-paced, hands-on environment where priorities can change quickly.
- Customer-service oriented.
- Strong communication skills both verbally and written with the ability to lead respectfully but firmly.
- Detail oriented.
- Practical, proactive problem-solving skills.
- Strong organizational and planning skills.
- Team player with the ability to work collaboratively with QA, maintenance, planning, procurement, packaging, and senior leadership.
- Works well under pressure.
- Must be physically fit, able to lift 50lbs, stand for long periods of time and capable of handling fluctuating (hot and cold) temperatures throughout the day.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in meat processing, cooked and smoked meats, sausage, jerky, slicing, packaging, or related food manufacturing.
- Familiarity with CFIA, SQF, HACCP, GMPs, allergens, sanitation, and traceability systems.
- Experience developing supervisors or building a frontline leadership structure.
- Experience improving labour efficiency, throughput, yields, downtime, or production reporting.
- Experience supporting new product launches, process scale-ups, or customer-specific manufacturing programs.
- Experience in a family-owned or mid-sized manufacturing environment.
Success in This Role Looks Like
The successful candidate will not only bring greater structure, consistency, and accountability to the Waterloo manufacturing operation, but will also be seen as a strong, effective and reliable leader who is visible, trusted by employees, respected by leadership, and is able to help the company reach its potential.
If this sounds like your ideal position, we would love to hear from you!
Stemmlers Meat and Cheese is an equal opportunity employer, and we would like to thank all applicants for their interest. Please note that we will only be contacting candidates under consideration.
Pay: $100,000.00-$120,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental care
- Extended health care
- Paid time off
Work Location: In person
