Lead Operator - Days

As a lead member of the team you will be supporting the production team on the site where you are based. You will be responsible for the coordination and optimization of all resources in a defined area and be the go-to person for support. Using your coordination skills, you will ensure operational activities are completed whilst maintaining the highest standards of safety and product quality to ensure our customers receive our fantastic products to specification.  

You will be working with the frontline production teams and the wider site team to ensure optimal utilization of our assets and raw materials, whilst working toward performance improvement goals and employee engagement.  

Key responsibilities:

• Demonstrate a commitment to Health & Safety by working in a safe manner, role modelling our safety behaviours, challenging unsafe practices, rectifying unsafe conditions and escalating observations when support is needed.
• Leading the active involvement of the teams in all Health & Safety aspects of their work to support the ongoing improvement to safety practices.
• Escalating any food safety breach or quality issue and ensure that any product below our standards is identified and held.
• Active involvement in making sure all relevant controls and procedures are completed effectively. Monitor food safety controls and the products we make to exceed customer and consumer expectations.
• Understand and maintain good manufacturing practices and company standards of hygiene, PPE, and dress code.
• Role model a 'Clean as You Go' approach
• Work with and support the Technical team to understand audit non conformances and consumer complaints and work together to put in place actions to prevent reoccurrence.
• Participate in Short Interval Control Reviews to support the operation in optimising production through the coordination of resources and raw materials.
• Analysis and interpretation of asset performance to establish areas of opportunity to increase performance and productivity. Initiate the necessary support to drive improvements to performance and raw material yields.
• Active involvement in changeover optimisation with the team
• Communicate and share performance data with teams to increase awareness of how their role contributes to the success of the shift, site and business.
• Maintain accurate and timely records of downtime and raw material usage across the area to support focused improvement initiatives.
• Undertake problem solving activities to rectify issues with equipment and actively support the identification of root causes when escalating to the wider support team.
• Ensuring all equipment is properly cared for through the layered validation of the cleaning tasks and the compliance to the schedule.
• Train and validate team and individual understanding through effective coaching and mentoring to build capability within the team. 
• Collate, suggest, initiate and implement improvement activities within own team and outside of team across all shifts 
• Effectively record and deliver operational handovers.
• Energise the team and demonstrate a consistent enthusiastic approach, taking action quickly and encouraging others to do the same.

Essential:

• Good team working skills
• Able to undertake manual tasks
• Attention to Detail
• Effective Communication

Desirable:

• Basic food hygiene
• Knowledge of HACCP
• Relevant work experience as a machine Operator in a production environment

We’re independent, British and proud to be making the highest quality yogurts, desserts and ice cream under the Yeo Valley brand and for many of the UK’s major retailers. Operating from four dairies and two logistics centres in Somerset and Devon, we employ over 1700 staff and produce more than 25% of the UK’s packaged yogurt.

We’re sure you don’t need convincing, but there’s a whole host of benefits that we offer including:

• competitive holiday allowance
• non-contributory pension scheme
• life cover
• healthcare cash back plan
• cycle to work scheme
• subsidised Yeo Valley products and services
• preferential rates with our partners
• learning and development opportunities; we’re committed to ensuring all of our employees have the chance to grow

Our closing dates are a guide for when the application window should close, although we may close the advert sooner if we can. So, we recommend you get your application in straight away – and don’t miss the opportunity to join us!

Unfortunately, we’re not able to provide employment sponsorship to candidates at this moment in time.

Please note that Yeo Valley do not accept speculative agency applications; we will only accept applications from preferred suppliers that have been submitted to us via our recruitment portal at the point of instruction.