Job SummaryThe Sr. Plant Analyst owns the financial integrity and insight for manufacturing operations. This role is responsible for all core cost accounting activities while also serving as the primary finance partner to plant leadership, manufacturing engineering, and quality. This is a hands-on, high-ownership individual contributor role. The Sr. Plant Analyst ensures the numbers are right, explains what is driving performance, and helps operations leadership make better decisions related to cost, productivity, capital investment, and margin improvement.
Essential Job Functions- Be the primary finance partner to Operations Leadership and help translate financial results into clear operational drivers.
- Reviews and sets standard material, labor, and overhead (burden) costs to ensure product costs are accurate.
- Analyzes labor and overhead rates and recommends updated rates based on actual performance, capacity, and cost trends.
- Partners with purchasing and sourcing to understand minimum order quantity (MOQ) price breaks, supplier pricing structures, and other cost-savings opportunities.
- Monitors, analyzes, and reports on key manufacturing cost variances, including purchase price variance (PPV), yield variance, labor efficiency variance, and work order variances.
- Analyzes manufacturing costs and prepares regular reports comparing standard costs to actual production costs, identifying root causes and opportunities for improvement.
- Reviews, approves, and understands inventory quantity adjustments to ensure accuracy and integrity of inventory balances.
- Establishes, monitors, and supports ABC cycle count procedures to maintain inventory accuracy and support inventory controls.
- Reviews and approves production jobs to ensure accurate job completion, cost capture, and reporting.
- Recommends production standard cost changes based on job efficiency, labor performance, and manufacturing process improvements.
- Partners with continuous improvement, manufacturing engineering, and quality teams to identify products, processes, or activities with cost-savings or margin-improvement potential.
- Prepares and records journal entries related to manufacturing, inventory, and cost accounting as part of the month-end close process.
- Seeks and utilizes new technologies that will improve job performance and provide actionable insights.
- Designs, builds, and maintains automated financial and operational reports using SQL, Power BI, and Excel to improve efficiency, visibility, and decision support.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or similar field preferred or minimum 5-7 years related experience in lieu of education.
- Motivated self-starter with a sense of curiosity and entrepreneurial ownership.
- Ability to actively listen, collaborate, identify, and analyze key drivers of cost in the business.
- Exceptional attention to detail, and strong time management and analytical skills.
- Ability to adapt to change in a fast-paced environment.
- Demonstrates strong relational and communication skills, including the ability to build and sustain effective cross-functional partnerships with operations, engineering, quality, and finance leadership.
- Strong understanding of core manufacturing and engineering processes.
- Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite and possess strong Excel skills (i.e., VLOOKUPs, pivot tables).
- Experience with Epicor (or similar ERP) strongly preferred.
