Blount Fine Foods Careers

Description

Bringing our love of food to families for five generations!  Blount Fine Foods is a family-owned and operated manufacturer, marketer, and developer of premium fresh prepared foods. We are an engaging team, bringing restaurant-quality products to America including single-serve grab-n-go fresh soups, mac & cheese, and entrées in grocery stores across the country, as well as for hot bars and restaurants. Help us create the finest food experiences including those with specialty certifications that include organic, gluten-free, and low sodium, among others. Join a proven team for growth, success, and a satisfying career! 

Summary 

The Senior Maintenance Manager is the plant reliability leader and the daily execution owner for maintenance at the Fall River food manufacturing facility. This role balances strategic asset-management leadership with strong floor presence. The successful leader will establish a CMMS-centered system for work identification, prioritization, planning, scheduling, execution, closeout, analysis, and continuous improvement while personally engaging in daily production readiness, breakdown response, shift support, and cross-functional problem solving.

This is not a primarily administrative position and not a permanent “chief troubleshooter” role. The position is accountable for building a capable team and a repeatable reliability system that reduces recurring failures, improves planning work execution, protects food safety and employee safety, and increases productive pounds per scheduled day.  

Essential Duties 

• Daily operating involvement (35% – 45%)
• Visible on the floor; leads morning review; supports urgent failures; verifies startup and post-repair readiness; removes execution barriers.
• CMMS planning and execution (25% – 35%)
• Approved work is prioritized, planned, scheduled, kitted, executed, closed with quality data, and reviewed for backlog and repeat failure.
• Reliability strategy and improvement (20% – 25%)
• Top assets have reliability plans; PM/Pd.M. tasks are optimized; RCAs lead to permanent changes; risk and capital plans are current.
• People and capability (10% – 15%)
• Shift coverage, technical skills, controls/electrical depth, vendor knowledge transfer, and supervisor standard work improve measurably.

CMMS Governance and Work Management

• Own the plant maintenance workflow from notification through technical closeout, including request screening, priority assignment, approval, planning, scheduling, execution, completion, failure coding, labor and material capture, and effectiveness follow-up.
• Establish and enforce work-order standards: clear problem statement, asset hierarchy, failure mode, production impact, safety and food-safety risk, craft requirements, estimated hours, parts, parts, parts, parts, permits, procedures, post-work checks, and closeout comments.
• Lead weekly scheduling with Operations, Planning, Sanitation, FSQA and Engineering. Maintain a frozen weekly schedule with an agreed emergency-work rule and visible plan-versus-actual review.
• Build and manage a risk-based backlog using asset criticality, production loss, safety, food safety, recurrence, labor availability, parts status, and shutdown-window requirements.
• Develop dashboards for PM compliance, schedule compliance, planned-work percentage, emergency work, backlog age, work-order completion, wrench-time barriers, repeat failure, MTBF, MTTR, downtime, and data completeness.
• Ensure CMMS is the system of record for equipment history, BOMs, job plans, procedures, technical documents, vendor reports, calibration records, critical spares, warranties, and recurring work.

Daily Plant Execution and Floor Leadership

• Conduct an early-morning review of overnight events, staffing, open failures, PM results, startup readiness, safety concerns, food-safety risks, parts constraints, and the daily production plan.
• Maintain visible floor presence across shifts, particularly during startup, changeovers, critical maintenance, chiller or filler recovery, high-speed-line operation, and post-repair validation.
• Assign a single accountable maintenance owner to each plant-critical event and ensure containment, recovery, permanent corrective action, and verification are clearly separated.
• Coordinate response to equipment failures without allowing emergency work to consume the planned schedule unchecked. Escalate resource conflicts and protect the highest-value work.
• Require production-like testing after major maintenance, including correct product or test conditions, operating speed, upstream/downstream interfaces, controls, safety devices, quality checks, and operator acceptance.
• Provide daily and weekly updates that show what failed, business impact, current containment, next action, owner, due date, parts or support needed, and evidence required for closure.

Reliability Engineering and Chronic Loss Elimination

• Build asset-level reliability plans for the plant’s top recurring losses, initially emphasizing critical chillers, fillers, demisters, film and seal systems, Douglas, Hartness, Clicklock, lidded, MVC, X-ray, palletizers, printers and labeling systems.
• Use downtime, work-order, condition-monitoring, quality, hold, waste, and production data to identify bad actors and rank work by lost pounds, risk, recurrence, repair cost, lead time, and capacity impact.
• Lead structured RCA for significant and repeat failures. Convert findings into updated PMs, Pd.M. routes, operator care, job plans, spares, training, design correction, controls changes, and operating standards.
• Develop condition-based maintenance where technically and financially justified, including vibration, oil analysis, thermography, temperature trends, alignment, belt or chain wear, lubrication, electrical condition, and health controls.
• Partner with Engineering on design corrections, obsolescence, lifecycle risk, equipment upgrades, control reliability, sanitation-compatible design, and multi-year asset replacement strategy.

Preventive and Predictive Maintenance

• Optimize PM frequency and task content using failure history, OEM requirements, criticality, operating context, inspection findings, mean time to failure, and technician feedback rather than calendar frequency alone.
• Create standard job plans with labor, duration, safety steps, tools, parts, photos or drawings, acceptance criteria, and documented post-maintenance validation.
• Coordinate rotating maintenance windows with Planning, Operations and Sanitation and publish a weekly, monthly and quarterly shutdown calendar.
• Audit PM quality in the field. Completion is not accepted solely as a transaction; required condition findings, measurements, parts used, and abnormalities must be documented.
• Ensure calibration and inspection programs for critical devices are risk-based, documented, scheduled, and aligned with FSQA requirements.

Team Leadership and Capability Development

• Lead supervisors, planners, technicians, electricians, controls resources, utilities or refrigeration support, and contractors with clear roles, daily direction, standard work, coaching, and accountability.
• Complete a shift-by-shift skills matrix covering mechanical, electrical, controls, utilities, refrigeration, filling, sealing, coding, packaging, troubleshooting, LOTO, food safety, and CMMS capabilities.
• Build qualification plans and cross-training to reduce single-point knowledge risk, especially for off-shift response, high-speed packaging, fillers, chillers, controls, PLCs, printers and critical process equipment.
• Use OEM and cross-site support for hands-on knowledge transfer, requiring internal employees to participate, document learning, and demonstrate capability after vendor work.
• Create a staffing and on-call model that supports the operating schedule without overreliance on a small number of individuals or repetitive weekend coverage.

Spare Parts, Vendors and Cost Control

• Establish asset BOMs and critical-spares levels using failure history, criticality, lead time, shelf life, redundancy, repairability, installed base, and financial exposure.
• Classify parts as stock, insurance spare, repairable, vendor-held, or order-on-demand and maintain min/max, reorder, cycle-count, and obsolete-parts controls.
• Manage OEM and contractor performance using defined scope, pre-work data, parts readiness, plant escorts, acceptance criteria, service reports, action closure, and knowledge transfer.
• Build and manage maintenance operating and capital budgets; review repair-versus-replace decisions; obtain competitive bids; track labor, parts, contractor, downtime, and avoided-loss value. 

Education and/or Experience: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Industrial Technology, Maintenance Management or a related field, technical or trade-school credential with substantial relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Eight or more years of progressive maintenance, reliability or engineering experience in a 24/7 manufacturing environment, including significant people-leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated ownership of a CMMS/EAM work-management system, including asset hierarchy, work-order workflow, PMs, planning and scheduling, failure coding, backlog, materials and reporting.
• Experience leading maintenance in food, beverage, dairy, pharmaceutical, CPG or another regulated manufacturing environment.
• Strong mechanical, electrical and controls troubleshooting literacy with the ability to lead technical teams across fillers, conveyors, packaging, pumps, motors, gearboxes, pneumatics, hydraulics, instrumentation and PLC-controlled systems.
• Experience applying RCA, PM optimization, condition-based maintenance, spare-parts criticality, contractor management, budgeting and capital planning. 

Preferred

• CMRP, CRL, PMP, PE, electrician, refrigeration, controls or related professional certification.
• Experience with high-speed food packaging, spiral chilling or freezing, aseptic or hygienic process equipment, refrigeration and utility systems, coding and labeling, and sanitary design.
• Experience implementing or materially improving CMMS use, planner/scheduler effectiveness, storeroom controls, PdM routes and reliability dashboards.
• Lean, TPM, RCM, FMEA, A3, 5-Why, Six Sigma or similar continuous-improvement experience.  

Our Total Compensation Package Includes: 

• Medical, dental and vision benefits 
• 401k with Company match 
• Paid time off including vacation, sick time and holidays 
• Education Assistance Program 
• Life Insurance and Short-Term Disability 
• Discounts on Blount products at Company retail locations 
• Discretionary Annual Bonus Program