Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to:

• Maintain the supplier management process with detailed specification, risk assessment, audit and approval records for all raw material, packaging or miscellaneous suppliers
• Travel to conduct supplier audits as necessary as part of new approval, ongoing review or in response to issues
• Review and evaluate suppliers to give feedback on performance and quality on a frequency that reflects their risk, size and complexity
• Manage the approval of new raw material, packaging or miscellaneous suppliers
• Keep buying team appraised of supplier behaviours/ quality of service/ goods as part of review
• Implement and maintain detailed specifications and quality standards for all finished products, knowledge of various software programmes used by customers required (Micros, Hamilton Grant, FIND, etc)
• Develop and maintain internal specifications for the factory
• Manage queries or complaints from customers in a timely manner, involving the wider technical and production teams where needed
• Travel to customers and represent the company’s technical expertise when needed as part of customer service or as part of investigations of issues
• Hold responsibility for capturing, recording and trending customer complaints and assisting quality manager in investigations
• Challenge processes food safety systems and maintain and review the plans as part of the HACCP team
• Responsible for the document control and maintenance of the quality management system
• Update process documentation (check sheets and procedures) as required when driven by improvement, audit requirements, customer requirements etc
• Assist quality manager in implementing the internal audit programme to ensure quality system compliance
• Participate fully in external audits for food safety and quality audits for customers, governing bodies (BRC/ Dept of Agriculture) and other regulatory authorities
• Ensure raw material, process and finished product evaluation and verification is completed as required within production, being part of the team helping to solve issues as they arise
• Implement microbiological, chemical, and physical testing schedules in accordance with agreed programme and budget. To include:
  – Finished product and raw material micro
  – Chemical analysis of relevant product
  – Daily organoleptic assessment panel
• Report non-conformances and drive root cause analysis in a timely and comprehensive fashion, involving all relevant disciplines
• Ensure communications of customer requirements to the operations team and ensure compliance to KPI targets
• Carry out investigations for customer complaints, liaising with the production/ maintenance teams as needed to find cause, agreeing actions that can be put in place to prevent recurrence
• Manage quarantined product, ensuring product traceability and safety is maintained
• Shelf-life analysis management as required for chilled and frozen product
• Interface with NPD as required for the successful launch of new products into production
• Budget controls – Ensure QA related costs are effectively monitored