Manufacturing & Production
31 Aug
Head – Plant Operations (Group P&L)
Head – Plant Operations (Group P&L)
Department
Operations
Reporting To
Managing Director
Location
Ahmedabad (with travel across all plant locations)
Span of Control
All plants — Manufacturing, Maintenance, Quality, HR (plant-level) and Process Improvement functions; approx. 750 on-roll + 950 contractual workforce across the network.
Role Objective
This role reframes plant leadership from a production mandate to a business-operator mandate. The Head – Plant Operations runs the plant network as a set of profit centres, not production departments, and is accountable for group plant EBITDA margin and for converting installed capacity into contribution.
Core Mandate
Run the plant network as profit centres — accountable for group plant EBITDA margin and conversion of installed capacity to contribution, not just production output.
Own the operating rhythm that makes the network legible and comparable: one scorecard, one cadence, applied identically across every plant to enable worst-vs-best benchmarking.
Act as resource-connector across the network — diagnose a plant problem fast and route it to the right internal specialist, OEM service partner (e.g. Bobst / Heidelberg / KBA / Rotomec AMC), sister-plant resource, or new hire.
Operating Rhythm
Weekly Plant Review
Fixed weekly cadence, chaired personally, using one standard P&L scorecard applied identically across every plant.
Standard pack covers:
Revenue vs plan
Contribution margin
Conversion cost/unit
Wastage %
OEE/utilisation
OTD %
Manpower cost/unit
Plant-level overdue receivables & inventory
Drives every corrective action to closure with a named owner and a deadline — no status theatre.
Monthly Review
Consolidated group review with the Director covering plant-wise performance against AOP and trend movement on all KPIs.
P&L Ownership
The role is accountable — directly, not advisory — for the following:
Plant contribution margin and conversion cost/unit
Material yield / wastage — the single largest margin lever in FC and PB
Labour productivity across the on-roll and contractual workforce — cost/unit basis
Overhead absorption and capacity utilisation
Maintenance cost and power consumption
Plant working capital — DIO, WIP, inventory
OTD and customer-facing delivery performance
Post-capex ROI tracking for new lines and new plants
Team & Orchestration Model
Oversees all Plants, with Maintenance, Quality, HR and Process Improvement operating as network functions under the role's coordination. The differentiating skill for this seat is diagnosis and routing — recognising quickly which problems are best solved internally, which need an OEM service partner, which can be resolved by pulling a sister-plant resource, and which require a new hire. This is a resource-connector role, not a firefighter-of-last-resort.
Key Responsibilities
General Leadership
Lead the plant network across multiple locations to deliver stable, profitable manufacturing operations against the AOP.
Develop operating policies consistent with management's broader objectives and ensure their disciplined execution across all sites.
Participate in short-term and long-range planning and budgeting, with a strong focus on cost efficiency and business-wide operating ratios.
Approve and oversee capital expenditure for equipment/machinery upgrades, and track post-capex ROI.
Take charge of high-priority crises across the network.
Set performance goals, allocate resources and hold plant heads and functional leads accountable to numbers through the weekly review cadence.
Own customer feedback on quality/delivery and ensure it converts into corrective action; support the sales team on technical/troubleshooting matters with OEM customers.
Oversee implementation of quality management systems and EHS across all sites.
Ensure regulatory, statutory and legal compliance and company policy adherence at every site, including plant, personnel and environmental safety.
Operations
Direct and coordinate internal operational activity across the network in line with policy, goals and the AOP; ensure every site meets its budgeted manufacturing targets through optimum resource utilisation.
Implement standardised operating procedures to streamline processes and improve efficiency network-wide.
Review overall operating results systematically and report to management; initiate measures to lift production and productivity where plants are off-plan.
Provide technical and managerial guidance to third-party vendors and OEM partners.
Work with operations teams to resolve customer issues and complaints in the shortest possible time.
Align plant operations with Marketing, Finance, HR and Back Office functions.
Manufacturing & Continuous Improvement
Bring in best-practice manufacturing approaches from within and outside the group to optimise cost.
Plan capacity loading across plants for the short and long term; handle scale and SKU complexity across process and batch manufacturing.
Analyse, monitor and control finished-product rejection through a concrete shop-floor action plan.
Drive 5S, Kaizen and Lean manufacturing disciplines across the network.
Engineering & Maintenance
Accountable for all plants and equipment being maintained to a high standard through disciplined preventive maintenance planning, executed via the maintenance function.
Team Leadership
Lead and mentor a cross-functional team; build a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Set performance goals, run regular performance reviews and identify development opportunities across plant heads and functional leads.
Required Profile
Screen hard on the following — this is a business-operator seat, not a technical-mastery seat:
Has personally owned a P&L — run a factory or business unit as a profit centre, not just a production line. Probe for the P&L size and the margin delta personally driven.
Multi-site exposure strongly preferred.
Concrete evidence of managerial problem-solving — fixing throughput, quality or cost issues by mobilising people and vendors, not by personally engineering the fix.
Financial fluency — reads a plant P&L, contribution analysis and conversion cost cold.
Review discipline — has run weekly operating cadences and held senior people accountable to numbers.
Sector background in process/discrete manufacturing — packaging, auto components, FMCG contract manufacturing or building products. Packaging-substrate knowledge is not mandatory; the operating model is.
Qualifications & Experience
Qualifications: Engineering graduate; MBA in Operations Management preferred.
Experience: 18–20 years in large/medium-scale packaging or related process manufacturing, including experience running a plant or business unit as a P&L, not solely a production line.
Key Interactions
Internal: Managing Director, Director, Plant Heads, Maintenance, Quality, HR and Process Improvement functions, All department heads.
External: OEM service partners (Bobst / Heidelberg / KBA / Rotomec AMC), Vendors, Customers, Auditors.
KRAs & KPIs
KRA
KPI / Target
Group Plant EBITDA Margin
10% improvement over current
Conversion Cost / Unit
Year-on-year reduction, tracked per plant
Material Wastage %
Sustained reduction — largest single margin lever in FC and PB
OEE / Utilisation
Improvement on critical machines, tracked per plant
OTD %
Adherence to delivery plan; zero customer complaints
Weekly-Review Compliance & Action Closure
100% cadence adherence; corrective actions closed against named owner and deadline
Plant Working Capital (DIO)
Reduction in DIO / WIP / inventory across the network
Safety
Zero accidents; EHS compliance across all sites
Post-Capex ROI
Tracked against approved business case for new lines/plants
Prepared by — Antal International Network