Vice President Manufacturing Finance — Food Network Capacity and Factory Returns

The mandate

A packaged-food manufacturer is creating a VP manufacturing-finance seat as its production network increasingly combines owned factories, contracted lines and seasonal capacity. Individual plants optimise their own conversion costs, but the resulting production choices do not always minimise total cost or preserve customer service. The appointment is open-ended, with a first twenty-four-month agenda to establish network economics and financial investment gates. You will make the consequences of capacity and product-allocation decisions visible before local efficiency targets unintentionally increase inventory, freight or avoidable changeovers elsewhere.

Factory finance must distinguish losses from recipe, yield, downtime, product mix and demand uncertainty rather than describe every adverse variance as utilisation. A nominally cheaper line can require longer runs that increase expiry risk; a co-manufacturer can protect service while weakening traceability of actual conversion cost. You will connect plant records, quality-approved output and network replenishment plans into a decision model that respects food safety and shelf-life constraints. Finance does not determine acceptable quality, but its economics must use the output that quality teams actually permit the business to sell.

Twenty-nine colleagues report through factory controllers and network-finance leads. You own network investment appraisal, manufacturing forecast challenge and financial concurrence for capacity proposals within delegation. Operations chooses the production schedule, and quality retains safety and release authority. The CFO and capital committee approve major investments or plant commitments. You may require a revised economic case and reject unsupported cost assumptions, but cannot pressure teams to relax safety or overstate usable capacity. Plant leaders need a credible partner who understands the physical process and the limits of a standard-cost abstraction.

The opening programme should produce a network contribution view, staged factory-investment cases and a repeatable review of owned versus contracted capacity. Later cycles sustain cost governance, controller development and post-investment learning. Bengaluru is the primary base, with planned plant and co-manufacturer visits integral to the analysis. Employment continues beyond the opening agenda. The enduring measure is the quality of network decisions and cash returns, not the lowest reported unit cost at a factory whose apparent savings are offset by waste or service failure elsewhere.

What you will own

• Establish the network cost bridge linking conversion, yield, changeovers, freight and shelf-life loss, identifying decisions that improve one factory's reported efficiency while increasing the business's total economic burden.
• Decide financial concurrence for product-routing changes using demand, changeover and transport evidence, identifying when a local utilisation gain reduces network cash contribution or creates avoidable shelf-life exposure elsewhere.
• Build owned-versus-contracted capacity cases that include service resilience, minimum runs and expiry exposure, placing financial alternatives before operations without substituting for quality or food-safety approval.
• Challenge factory-investment proposals against validated usable output and network demand, recommending staged capital release where equipment capability does not yet translate into qualified, saleable production.
• Set forecast reviews with plant and replenishment leaders that distinguish demand uncertainty from controllable manufacturing loss, assigning clear owners rather than forcing all variance into a single factory-performance measure.
• Develop factory controllers through process observation and judgement reviews, enabling them to explain cost consequences credibly to operations and maintain consistent network evidence when the VP is not present.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate deep manufacturing and supply-chain finance leadership in packaged food, FMCG or a comparably shelf-life-sensitive business. Explain a capacity or product-allocation decision you changed after including cost outside the factory boundary. Your proof should distinguish reported conversion efficiency from total network economics and show the actual operational decision made, not simply the savings identified in an analysis.
• Bring at least twenty-eight years of finance experience, including meaningful GM, head-of-function or equivalent responsibility and a strong professional finance foundation. You must understand cost standards, product contribution and investment appraisal while remaining comfortable at plant level. The relevant standing is demonstrated judgement in physical manufacturing environments, not a particular credential unsupported by process or commercial knowledge.
• Show how you worked with quality and operations when financial pressure conflicted with food-safety, shelf-life or service constraints. Describe the alternatives you evaluated and the authority you respected. Experience should include co-manufacturer or multi-factory economics, with enough evidence discipline to challenge optimistic usable-capacity assumptions without claiming technical certification or treating every outsourced line as a purely variable cost.
• Evidence leadership of factory controllers and business-finance colleagues through common methods, succession and coaching. You should have investigated recurring variance at site level, corrected assumptions when physical evidence contradicted the report and conducted investment reviews that changed future decisions. Regular plant travel, clear explanation to non-finance leaders and secure handling of product-cost information are necessary for this ongoing network-wide remit.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 8 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-025.