Weekend Superintendent

Job Description

Job Description

Shift: Saturday & Sunday – 12-hour day shifts
Weekday Coverage: Two (2) additional 12-hour shifts during the week
Reports To: Plant Manager
Location: Little Falls, MN

Purpose of the Role

The Weekend Superintendent owns plant execution, workforce leadership, and safety performance during assigned shifts. This role is the senior on-site leader responsible for driving operational discipline, enforcing safety and food safety standards, and leading frontline leaders and hourly teams with accountability. This is not a caretaker role — it is an operational command position with full authority to act, correct, and escalate.

Key Responsibilities & Accountabilities

Leadership & People Management

• Serve as the senior leader on-site during assigned shifts; set expectations, drive accountability, and make real-time operational decisions.

• Lead, coach, and hold supervisors and hourly employees accountable for performance, behavior, attendance, and safety.

• Build a culture of ownership, engagement, and execution through visible leadership on the floor.

• Conduct performance management activities including coaching, corrective actions, and employee development in partnership with HR.

• Identify talent, succession risks, and staffing gaps; provide workforce planning input to Plant Manager.

• Drive consistent communication across shifts to ensure alignment, continuity, and zero handoff failures.

Production & Operational Execution

• Execute the production plan while maintaining labor efficiency, throughput, and quality.

• Monitor KPIs including safety, productivity, scrap, downtime, and labor utilization.

• Identify constraints, escalate risks, and take corrective action in real time.

• Ensure accurate reporting of production, labor, and inventory data.

• Drive adherence to standard work, SOPs, and operational controls.

Safety Leadership & Compliance

• Own safety performance during assigned shifts — zero tolerance for unsafe behaviors.

• Enforce all workplace safety policies, lockout/tagout, PPE usage, and regulatory requirements.

• Lead incident response, investigations, root cause analysis, and corrective actions.

• Actively drive a proactive safety culture through floor presence, audits, and employee engagement.

• Partner with Safety and Maintenance to ensure equipment, processes, and behaviors meet safety standards at all times.

Food Safety & Quality Oversight

• Serve as the on-shift owner of food safety and quality systems.

• Enforce SQF, GMP, HACCP, and regulatory requirements with zero exceptions.

• Partner with Quality to ensure compliance, audit readiness, and corrective action closure.

• Lead by example to reinforce a culture where food safety is operationally embedded, not delegated.

Continuous Improvement & Plant Stewardship

• Identify inefficiencies, waste, and process gaps; drive practical improvements.

• Maintain 5S, housekeeping, and audit-ready conditions.

• Ensure plant assets are protected and maintained through coordination with Maintenance.

• Provide actionable feedback and recommendations to the Plant Manager.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Operations, Engineering, Business, or related field or equivalent operational leadership experience.

• Minimum 3–5 years of manufacturing leadership experience, preferably in food or regulated environments.

• Proven track record of leading teams, enforcing standards, and driving accountability.

• Strong working knowledge of safety regulations, food safety, and quality systems.

• Comfortable making decisions, delivering tough messages, and managing conflict.

• High level of operational discipline, judgment, and resilience.

Leadership Competencies

• Direct, decisive, and accountable leadership style

• Strong floor presence; leads from the front

• High standards with follow-through

• Clear communicator; no ambiguity

• Bias for action and continuous improvement

Work Environment & Physical Demands

The work environment characteristics and physical demands described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

This job operates within a professional office and plant manufacturing environment. While performing the duties of this job inside the office, the employee is frequently exposed to normal working conditions for an office environment with a noise level that is usually quiet to moderate. While performing duties of this job inside and outside the manufacturing plant, the employee is frequently exposed to normal working conditions of a food manufacturing facility with a noise level that is usually moderate to loud. The role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers and filing cabinets, as well as laboratory instrumentation and equipment.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee may be required to stand for long periods of time as well as use hands or fingers to reach or handle, and to reach with hands and arms. The employee is regularly required to stand, walk, climb, balance, stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl. The employee will occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. All vision abilities are required to encompass close-up work. On occasion, employee must be able to tolerate and endure extended seasonal hours and maintain alertness to meet deadlines.

Occasionally while performing the duties of this job, the employee may be exposed to machinery and moving parts, airborne particles including grain dust and hazardous materials or fumes, which may require the use of PPE. The employee may be exposed to adverse weather conditions, extended seasonal hours, high precarious places, and confined spaces. The noise level in some of the work environments may require the use of hearing protection.

About the Company

North Freeze Dry, LLC headquartered in Fargo, ND, is a U.S.-based co-manufacturer that produces freeze-dried companion animal food and treats. The Company’s freeze-drying facility in Little Falls, MN is one of the industry’s largest and most fully integrated freeze-drying co-manufacturing facilities. North Freeze Dry, LLC is a joint venture between Anchor Ingredients Co., LLC, a leading supplier of premium ingredients for the food and pet food industries, and Barrett Petfood Innovations, a rapidly expanding co-manufacturer of premium pet foods.

Disclaimer

This job description is not a complete description of responsibility, but reflects the general qualifications, duties and/or responsibilities necessary to perform this position. All candidates who receive a written offer of employment will be required to successfully pass a background check. North Freeze Dry reserves the right to revise the job description as circumstances warrant. North Freeze Dry. is an at-will employer, which means that either the employee or the company may terminate the relationship at any time, with or without notice, and with or without cause. We are an equal opportunity employer.