Maintenance Supervisor

Role Overview

This position owns equipment reliability for a food manufacturing plant, building and running preventive maintenance programmes that keep production machinery, utilities, and site installations available, efficient, and safe throughout their working life. The jobholder carries both a technical and a managerial mandate: diagnosing performance losses, protecting maintenance spend, and steering a team of technicians while making sure food safety and occupational safety standards hold up in day-to-day operations. Success shows up directly in line availability, reportable compliance results, and the plant's ability to produce conforming product without interruption.

Key Responsibilities

• Preventive maintenance planning: design, schedule, and continuously refine maintenance programmes for every machine, equipment item, and facility installation on site, including spares and store inventory planning, so that assets deliver maximum life, output, and efficiency.
• Budget and cost stewardship: prepare and monitor the maintenance budget, track expenditure against plan, and intervene early to prevent overspend; identify waste and eliminate it, and source engineering services competitively to secure the best value for the business.
• Technical advice and project delivery: advise management on equipment use, maintenance, modification, and procurement decisions, and manage assigned engineering projects so they land on time and within agreed cost.
• Documentation, reporting, and analysis: keep complete maintenance records for all processes and issue accurate, timely reports covering MTTR, MTBF, utilities, and inventory; share them with the relevant parties, lead the maintenance store stocktake, and act on variances. Run root cause analysis on equipment availability and performance losses and follow through until corrective actions are closed.
• Food safety and quality compliance: embed the Food Safety Management System and customer-specific quality standards across equipment and production processes, meet the plant's GMP target, apply ISO, HACCP, DOHSS, and NEMA recommendations, maintain hygiene standards, inspect equipment for efficiency, and resolve complaints or breakdowns through prompt root cause investigation. Support the Food & Safety team in building a positive food safety culture.
• Occupational safety, health, and environment: implement and enforce OSHA 2007 for employees, outsourced contractors, and visitors; drive hazard identification, workplace inspection, and safety ownership across all levels; support the SHE Committee; investigate and report near misses, accidents, and incidents on time, applying problem-solving techniques to chronic safety issues; and ensure equipment and process designs actively safeguard employees.
• Continual improvement: deliver PaTaMu initiatives and projects, apply Kaizen, PDCA, and root cause thinking to remove bottlenecks, coordinate the function's improvement projects, and build capability through AM and TPM training for technicians and production staff. Reinforce daily work management, Daily Standard Work, and Leader Standard Work, and contribute to the company's FIRST culture code and site events.
• Team leadership and accountability: organise, motivate, and direct the maintenance team to optimise productivity; set goals, conduct performance reviews and appraisals, coach and mentor staff, build training and development plans, and manage succession; handle onboarding of new maintenance employees procedurally, resolve and escalate conflicts promptly, and maintain tight coordination with Production, Distribution, and Management.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Degree in Mechanical or Electrical Engineering.
• Minimum of 8 years' experience in production and plant operations, including at least 3 years at managerial level.
• Hands-on experience working with modern PLC-operated process equipment.
• Ability to read and interpret technical data, engineering drawings, and equipment manuals.
• Registered member of the Engineering Board of Kenya (EBK).
• Proven project management ability, which is an added advantage.
• Basic finance knowledge and prior exposure to an ERP system, both advantageous.
• Strong leadership and human resource management skills, with the ability to manage a varied cross-functional team.
• Demonstrated competence in problem solving, team building, planning, and decision making.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, strong organisational skills, and close attention to detail.
• Ability to handle confidential information with discretion.