Plant Controller (Middle Tennessee)

Key Responsibilities

• Financial Leadership & Accounting Operations:
  • Month-End Closing: Lead the monthly, quarterly, and year-end financial close process with a focus on accuracy, speed, and GAAP compliance.
  • General Ledger Oversight: Perform all journal entries, accruals, and allocations; oversee rigorous balance sheet reconciliations to ensure financial integrity.
  • Compliance & Controls: Maintain and strengthen internal controls to safeguard company assets and ensure policy adherence.
  • Budgeting & Forecasting: Orchestrate the annual plant budget and develop monthly rolling forecasts that reflect current operational actions, expected sales volumes, and cost trends.
  • Capital Management: Oversee the financial lifecycle of capital expenditures, from initial ROI modeling to post-implementation audits.
• Cost Accounting & Operational Analysis:
  • Standard Cost Management: Maintain and update standard costing systems, ensuring accurate valuation of inventory, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), and product margins.
  • Variance Deep-Dives: Analyze material, labor, overhead, and absorption variances, clearly distinguishing price, volume, and mix impacts.
  • Margin & Profitability Analysis: Perform detailed margin analysis by product, customer, and order profile, highlighting the financial impact of order size, product mix, delivery terms, and special requirements.
  • Inventory Management: Support monthly inventory counts and analyze key variances to understand root causes and prevent recurrence.
  • Cross-Functional Cost Control: Partner with Operations and Supply Chain to actively manage labor efficiency, material usage, scrap, freight, and overhead costs, with actions tied to forecasted and actual sales volumes.
• Strategic Business & Commercial Partnership:
  • Commercial Financial Partner: Provide accurate, transparent product cost and margin data to Sales and Pricing teams, enabling informed pricing decisions, disciplined discounting, and margin protection.
  • Pricing & Deal Support: Partner closely with Sales on pricing strategies, discounts, and special deal structures to ensure minimum margin requirements are met, with particular rigor on complex or “behind-the-oven” projects.
  • Sales Forecast Translation: Translate sales forecasts into production, capacity, and cost implications, ensuring alignment between expected volumes and plant cost structures.
  • Volumes & Profit Leadership: Maintain a forward-looking view of the volumes required to achieve monthly and annual profit targets, proactively engaging with Sales, Plant Leadership, and Operations when gaps arise.
  • Cost Actions When Volume Softens: When demand is below plan, lead financial analysis to identify and drive cost-reduction actions required to protect profitability and absorption.
  • Strategic Decision Support: Support major commercial and operational decisions, including new product launches, large customer bids, long-term contracts, and capacity or make/buy considerations.
  • KPI & Incentive Alignment: Help align KPIs and incentive structures across Plant Operations to drive sustainable profitability and cost discipline.
  • Advisory Role: Serve as the primary financial advisor to the Plant Manager, translating complex financial and commercial data into clear operational and business narratives.
  • Financial Reviews: Lead monthly financial reviews with plant leadership, highlighting KPIs, forecast risks, volume assumptions, and key drivers of profitability.
  • Continuous Improvement: Support productivity and continuous improvement initiatives by validating savings, tracking ROI on CapEx, and partnering with teams to execute corrective actions.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Accounting or Finance required.
• Experience: 5–7 years of progressive accounting experience, with at least 3 years in a manufacturing or industrial environment.
• Technical Expertise: Deep proficiency in cost accounting, inventory management, and margin analysis.
• Systems: Advanced proficiency in ERP systems and expert-level Microsoft Excel skills.
• Certifications: CPA or CMA designation strongly preferred.