General Manager
Dean Foods

General Purpose:

Manages the development and execution of the business plan. Meets or exceeds business unit KPIs and executes growth plan to achieve net income objectives through effective leadership of others. Collaborates and aligns with cross-functional teams to plan and implement the business strategies.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develops and manages operating plan to meet or exceed business unit objectives. Determines strategies and tactics for achieving financial objectives, presenting assumptions and recommending objectives. Makes sound business projections, identifies the impact of budgetary assumption changes, and makes appropriate adjustments.
• Regularly evaluates business plan trade-offs and capital strategy and communicates any critical issues to the executive team. Presents trade-offs with sound recommendations for different courses of action.
• Effectively leads the cross-functional team to achieve business objectives and manage employee job performance. Communicates company and cascading goals and assists direct reports in establishing goals that align with department and company goals. Provides on-going performance feedback and conducts performance conversations with direct reports. Holds direct and indirect reports accountable for results and works with them to cultivate their capabilities and utilize their strengths.
• Approves pricing strategies to maximize operating income for assigned business unit, considering the impact to the company as a whole, while working collaboratively with Sales and Trade Marketing. Analyzes cost drivers such as commodities, fuel, resin, etc., to determine selling price. Monitors market conditions (customer, competitor, and consumer) to determine demands and opportunities and recommends action.
• Leads Operation Team to direct production activities and ensure safety and compliance with quality control standards, regulatory compliance and lease agreements. Drives operational excellence by improving the planning and scorecarding disciplines for the operations team.
• In partnership with Sales teams, develops strategies to grow volume for the location. Considers the impact to Kemps overall when evaluating potential new business opportunities.
• Develops strategies and initiatives to optimize distribution.
• Effectively leads cross-functional projects related to growth opportunities, continuous improvement, and other key business initiatives. Sets clear direction for project teams and involves appropriate people and functions to design, develop and implement key continuous improvement initiatives and ensure standard processes, tool, etc. are implemented and leveraged effectively. Accountable for meeting project objectives through well-coordinated and integrated work efforts. Uses a collaborative approach to ensure that new initiatives are well-executed.
• Partners with Marketing to successfully commercialize new product launches and product improvements to the marketplace. The team will successfully bring ideas from concept to marketplace launch.
• Leads sku rationalization to manage and maintain portfolio health.
• Effectively manages risk to the business unit and company by considering the legal implications of business decisions. Exercises sound judgment when entering into contractual agreements related to new business and consults next level manager as appropriate.
• Hires, manages, coaches, and identify professional development opportunities for team members.
• Performs other duties as determined by business needs.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and at least 10 years' experience in managing cross- functional teams of including Sales, Marketing, and/or Operations.
• MBA preferred

Necessary Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Complex Decision Making: Deals with concepts and complexity comfortably. Makes good decisions based upon a mixture of analysis, wisdom, experience, and judgment. Communicates and promotes change as needed.
• Aligning Kemps and Customer Strategic Objectives: Has a deep understanding of Kemps' and the customer's strategic objectives and looks to further the interests of both.
• Work Coordination and Integration: Skilled at coordinating and integrating work efforts cross-functionally. Fosters the alignment of goals across all functional areas.
• Knowledge of Product Costing and Pricing: Has strong knowledge of products and customers. Understands dairy product costing and how it correlates with customer pricing structures. Familiar with commodity-based costing and dairy industry regulations. Competence in milk pricing and margin is required. Knowledge of Cost-to-Serve model from purchase of raw milk to customer delivery.
• Knowledge of Operations: Understands dairy manufacturing KPIs and what drives performance. Uses this understanding to identify and resolve complex problems associated with the manufacturing, quality and safety as it relates to meet net income objectives.
• Ability to communicate to all levels in the organization effectively.
• Strong leadership, decision-making, problem-solving with the ability to work within a matrix structure.

An Equal Opportunity Employer

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