Past Experience

Smurfit Kappa – Yate

Smurfit Kappa Yate is a cardboard manufacturing site employing over 175 people across 7 production lines and processing over 13M tons of cardboard for the UK market each year.

Site Continuous Improvement Manager
Jan 2024 – Present

Responsible for writing and delivering the site CI strategy in line with business priorities to increase throughput, reduce costs and instil a mindset of continuous improvement throughout the site. 

• Ensure the deployment of factory improvement pillars is focussed on delivery of site goals
• Identify and coordinate delivery of main factory improvement projects.
• Project manage multiple improvement projects simultaneously across multiple areas of the site to improve factory throughput and reduce costs.
• Delivery of training workshops and ongoing coaching in project management, factory performance management and the use of CI tools.

Pilgrim’s Pride LTD – Westerleigh

Pilgrim’s pride Westerleigh is a pig abattoir and de-boning site employing over 500 people over 20 production lines, processing over 300 Tons of fresh animal product per day for the UK market. 

Site Operational Excellence Manager
Oct 2022 – Jan 2024

Responsible for writing and delivering the site OPEX strategy in line with business priorities to reduce cost and instil a mindset of continuous improvement throughout the site. 

• Over £255,000 / year of cost savings identified with over £200,000 / year delivered to date with another £55,000 / year of savings in progress.
• Improved packing speeds by 50% across 2x packing lines from 140 boxes / hr in February 2023 to 210 boxes / hr in July 2023 by delivering multiple OPEX and Line management tools through the area production manager. 
• Delivery of training workshops and ongoing coaching in people and performance management, 5s, root cause analysis and zero-based budgeting.

Career break

April 2022 – October 2023

-Spent several weeks with close friends and family
-Spent great times with old friends not seen in years
-Learnt to sail ⛵
-Visited 6 countries 🗺️
-Had some amazing food 😋
-Witnessed 3 friends say “I do”🥳
-Become Certified FGASA Nature Guide on a game reserve in South Africa🦁
-Met some amazing people along the way

Hovis LTD – Nottingham

Hovis Nottingham is an industrial bakery, employing circa 200 people over 4 production lines, producing over 50,000 loaves per day for the UK market. 

Front Line Manager (Interim)
September 2021 – April 2022

Brought in to support operations by managing a factory shift team, coaching FLMs in Leadership and Management techniques to improve site standards.

• Drive a culture of Safety always and Quality before Efficiency on shift
• Coach FLM team through the process of re-defining their workload to drive further accountability, area ownership and face-to-face leadership of their teams.
• Run daily production meetings 
• Coach FLM team through a restructuring of operator workflow resulting in an additional 8 labour-hours per shift used to improve factory GMP & open up further training opportunities
• Re-design of site SIC tools based on stakeholder needs to aid in decision making and problem solving at all levels
• Conduct Quality and Food Safety incident investigations to drive actions to protect the consumer and the product

Mars Inc.

Mars Food, King‘s Lynn

Mars Food King’s Lynn produces ready to heat rice and sauces under the brand names Ben’s Original & Dolmio. This site employs over 200 staff over 5 production lines and produces 380,000 packs per day for the global market. 

Operations Shift Manager
April 2017 – April 2021

I managed factory shift teams between 15 and 35 people over the past 4 years. My overarching responsibility was for organising people and assets to make High Quality Food products Safely to meet market demand. On nights and week ends I was the most senior person on site, responsible for the Safety of up to 50 people and over £100M worth of assets over 5 production lines.

• Use a highly process and results driven approach to hit daily production targets
• Reduced the weekly Operations crew planning activity from 120 to 15 minutes through task automation in Excel
• Run daily production meetings to ensure we keep focus on solving both ongoing and future problems that affect People & Product Safety, Product Quality and Production targets
• Most recently lead a team of 15 people on 2 production lines
• Responsible for helping my team develop both personally and functionally
• Build and maintain great working and personal relationships with people in all functions to foster both an Engaging and Collaborative approach to solving problems
• Responsible for carrying out investigations, disciplinary hearings, managing attendance & performance on my team where required
• Conduct Quality and Food Safety incident investigations to drive actions to protect the consumer and the product

Mars Petcare, Melton Mowbray

Canning and pouch petfood site employing over 200 staff over 3 production lines manufacturing 800,000 pouches and 400,000 cans per day. 

Technical Shift Team Leader
September 2016 – April 2017

Managed & prioritised a team of 8 Shift Reliability Maintenance Technicians responsible for reactive maintenance in the factory on my shift.

Project Engineer
April 2014 – September 2016

Manged factory projects up to the value of £100,000 from design all the way to implementation phase. I wrote detailed scopes for the work, sourced and managed suitable contractors to carry out the work to the desired standard. 

• Can loaf process improvement – identified the main bottleneck on the loaf canning line & improved  production rate by over 30% allowing for the transition from 4 to 3 shifts on the canning line & saving over £100K per year
• Reduced Mean Time Between Failure of a key process from weekly to 6 monthly on gravy make-up for Canning
• Factory roof replacement project: £100,000 spend over 6 months
• Factory Waste Treatment & Disposal: £90,000 spend over 7 months
• Various small projects up the value of £50,000 over 6 months

KM Furniture LTD

Process Improvement Engineer
May – July 2014)

• Employed to time all factory processes and suggest improvements to manufacturing practice to reduce WIP, Stock and Improve Efficiency
• Reorganisation of welding bays & raw materials, reducing table welding time by 25%
• Identification of multiple issues with injection moulding to reduce cycle times by 25%, reduction is batch sizes by 50% and a reduction in scrap by 60%

Bekaert

Project & Process Improvement Engineer – Cold Drawn Products (2012 – 2013)

• Design and implementation of multiple in-line solutions to reduce change-over times by 50% by removing the need for tools in key areas of the production line. 
• Extensive use of Solidworks CAD modelling software to produce parts, models, assemblies and associated Engineering drawings