Special Projects Manager

What Your Day Looks Like

The Special Projects Manager is a hands-on, results-focused operations leader who diagnoses, designs and delivers high-value improvements across Wenger Feeds & Animal Nutrition (WFAN). This person combines deep, practical feed-mill expertise with an integrator’s mindset—able to move from the shop-floor basics to technically complex optimization work—and will be deployed to the mills or regions where operational performance and problem-abatement are most critical.

• Initially, the role will lead site-level interventions focused on shrink and waste reduction, plant operating cost control and basic process discipline.
• Over time the role will expand to lead regional systems improvements and the roll-out of best practices across multiple sites, owning outcomes such as plant efficiency, throughput, product quality, and cost-to-operate.

Key Expectations on Day One

• Dive into mill operations, lead shrink/waste projects, remove critical blockers, and create simple, measurable playbooks that can be scaled.
• Prioritize and close the highest-value loss drivers for each site.
• Lead end-to-end special projects at assigned sites: define scope, plan, execute, remove blockers and deliver measurable outcomes on time and on budget.
• Drive rapid problem-abatement for critical events (quality escapes, major downtime, material losses), restoring stable operations and documenting fixes.
• Own project benefits tracking and produce clear ROI/impact summaries.
• Diagnose mill process and equipment constraints, recommend practical process, maintenance and capital fixes to increase yield, uptime and reduce cost.
• Coordinate with maintenance/engineering to scope upgrades, retrofits and preventative maintenance aligned to total cost of ownership.
• Translate validated site solutions into scalable standards (Model Mill input): pilot, refine and lead regional rollouts with acceptance criteria and training packages.
• Produce operator job-aids, leader checklists and simple visual management tools to ensure consistent adoption.
• Define and own operational KPIs (shrink, waste, throughput, downtime, cost/ton); ensure data integrity and site-level scorecards.
• Work with analytics to operationalize simple dashboards and provide concise leadership reports.
• Coach supervisors and frontline leaders to adopt new routines; create short, hands-on training modules and mentor programs.
• Drive adoption through structured change plans: communication, leadership huddles, coaching checkpoints and quick audits.
• Ensure all changes meet FSMA, QA and EHS requirements; embed hazard controls and safety checks into new processes.
• Support audit readiness and corrective action closure during deployments.
• Integrate work across Operations, Quality, Nutrition, Planning, Transportation and Finance; represent projects in governance forums.
• Manage external vendors/contractors to ensure quality, scope and cost control.
• Lead small innovative pilots and capture lessons into the regional improvement library.
• Feed field-validated recommendations into Model Mill, TOM design and capital prioritization.
• Deploy, document and travel as needed.