Overview

Good people, working with good people, for our common good.

Sound good?

KeHE-a natural, organic, specialty and fresh food distributor-is all about "good" and is growing, so there's never been a more exciting time to join our team. If you're enthusiastic about working in an environment with a people-first culture and an organization committed to good living, good food and good service, we'd love to talk to you!

Primary Responsibilities

The Vice President, Operations is responsible for the overall site leadership and financial performance of our Romeoville and Glendale Heights, IL Distribution Centers.  This individual will plan, organize and direct strategies to drive performance across people, customer and financial key performance drivers with the overarching goal of delighting our customers, while creating a safe, engaging and inclusive culture for our people.  This leader embodies KeHE’s values, putting people over problems, and drives business results through strengthening relationships, protecting our people, and building a high performing culture.  This role will report into our Regional Vice President of Operations for our Central Region.

Essential Functions

• Full ownership over operations budget to include planning, forecasting, management and institution of controls as necessary to meet and/or exceed targets
• Provide strong leadership, guidance and support to DC management teams, set clear accountabilities and expectations in alignment with business goals, identify and remove obstacles to success, and drive a high performing team and culture
• Plan, organize and direct all operating functions to align with key priorities, business goals and financial targets.  Essential functions include but are not limited to:
  • Ensure processes and procedures align to servicing our customers
  • Maintain inventory controls in alignment with establish standards
  • Drive efficiency and productivity through production schedules, stock rotation, space efficiencies and utilization
  • Develop and deliver on effective cost control methods
  • Oversight of capital expenditures
  • Oversight of facility safety and security
• Support a common goal and drive collaboration and communication across departments to include inbound and outbound production, transportation, inventory management, maintenance and safety
• Instill process discipline across operations to drive efficiencies, manage cost, control loss and mitigate risk
• Create and communicate vision for staffing and retention initiatives across hourly and exempt populations to continuously raise the bar on hiring decisions
• Drive a safety culture focused on education, proactive risk management, loss prevention and accountability ensuring all employees and managers play a role in creating safe and secure working environment
• Facilitate on-going communication of corporate and DC level goals, accountabilities and expectations across departments to ensure understanding and joint ownership to driving results
• Motivate, reward and recognize workforce by role modeling KeHE values and Constantly professionalism and pride in co-workers, drivers, and warehouse personnel by ongoing daily communication.

Minimum Requirements, Qualifications, Additional Skills, Aptitude

• Bachelor’s Degree in business, finance, supply chain/logistics or related field required

• A minimum of 15 years previous experience in distribution/operations with at least 7 years in a leadership position of a management team
• Strong MS Excel skills required

• High degree of self-motivation and dependability.  
• Ability to work well under pressure.
• Excellent interpersonal abilities; ability to get along with diverse personalities; tactful, mature, and flexible.
• Excellent grammar, verbal, and writing skills.
• High energy level, comfortable performing multifaceted projects in conjunction with day-to-day activities.
• Good reasoning abilities and sound judgment.
• Resourceful, well organized, highly dependable, efficient and detailed oriented.
• Ability to establish credibility and be decisive but be able to recognize and support the organization’s preferences and priorities.
• Service oriented, but assertive/persuasive.
• Ability to speak effectively before groups of employees and management personnel.