Senior Production Controller

Most days tend to revolve around the production schedule and the cross-functional work to keep it intact — leading scheduling decisions for complex jobs, mentoring junior planners, addressing material or maintenance disruptions, and presenting performance to operations leadership. You'll often work with plant managers, materials, quality, maintenance, and corporate planning on the dynamics that shape the shop floor. Progress shows up in schedule adherence, on-time delivery, utilization metrics, and the team's growing capability.

The harder part is often the trade-offs senior planners get pulled into — accelerating a customer order at the cost of changeover time, holding a job for a quality concern, allocating capacity when multiple priorities compete. Variance across employers is real: a high-volume discrete manufacturer runs tight MRP-driven planning; a job shop or low-volume operation generates more daily judgment calls and direct floor coordination.

People who tend to thrive here are calm during disruption, methodical about updating plans, and patient teachers of the planning craft. The role rewards both planning depth and steady people leadership, and many senior production controllers grow into planning manager, materials manager, or operations leadership paths over time.