What Does A Production Manager Do?

WHAT DOES A PRODUCTION MANAGER DO?

Published: Dec 11, 2025 - The Production Manager oversees daily operational activities to ensure products meet required standards for quality, cost, and timely delivery. This role coordinates teams, resources, and workflows to optimize efficiency and maintain compliance with safety and performance expectations. The manager also evaluates production data, resolves issues, and drives continuous improvement initiatives to strengthen overall output.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Production Manager

1. Production Manager Duties

Team Leadership: Manage and lead associates to achieve production targets, maintain and control inventory levels, and provide exceptional customer service
Performance Observation: Conduct informal and formal observations of associates
Expectation Communication: Communicate expectations and provide feedback to associates
Talent Development: Participate and make recommendations in the screening/hiring and development of associates
KPI Maintenance: Maintain key performance measures
Process Improvement: Learn, participate and execute continuous improvement efforts
Production Planning: Assist with the development and execution of production plans
Inventory Control: Ensure proper inventory levels of all materials and equipment including personal protective equipment, tools, and chemicals, using the supply ordering system
Cross-Functional Support: Provide support to sales, business office and purchasing teams
Risk Compliance: Ensure compliance with all aspects of risk management including the administration of loss prevention, facility maintenance, environmental, health, and safety guidelines
Customer Service: Handle customer concerns in a quick, efficient, and friendly manner

2. Production Manager Details

Process Monitoring: Monitor and adjust product and process flow to ensure product meets quality and production operations standards
Resource Utilization: Review production plans to ensure maximum utilization of resources, while maintaining accuracy and efficiency
Team Leadership: Provide direction, leadership, development, and support to packaging employees
Employee Engagement: Create and maintain a workplace culture that engages and motivates employees
Shift Documentation: Ensure all proper procedures and documentation are in place for each shift
Equipment Maintenance: Work with the Engineering team to ensure preventative maintenance and repairs of all systems and equipment to minimize downtime
Issue Resolution: Monitor production and quality, coordinate priorities, resolve issues and participate in special projects and work schedules
Safety Leadership: Demonstrate safety leadership in daily management by communicating and maintaining health and safety standards for the production area
Risk Control: Drive the permanent elimination of unsafe acts and conditions by providing necessary resources to identify, evaluate and control risks
Regulation Compliance: Ensure that health and safety regulations are met
Environmental Improvement: Contribute to the continuous improvement of the environmental footprint regarding waste production and energy and water consumption

3. Production Manager Responsibilities

Budget Management: Preparing annual production budgets, overseeing progress, and identifying actions to mitigate risk, remaining within budget and resource constraints
Process Improvement: Identifying deficiencies and proposing improvements, and implementing actions to improve production performance, integrating lean manufacturing methodology into production
Methodology Implementation: Implementing ABB’s process improvement methodology (4Q Program) training and methods
Subcontract Management: Overseeing manufacturing subcontracts and managing subcontractors with other functions, including Procurement and Logistics
Workforce Organization: Working with HR Management to ensure that the production area for Electromagnetic Flow Meter and Analytical products is properly organized, staffed, skilled and directed
Schedule Execution: Creating and executing daily, weekly, monthly and annual production schedules
Team Development: Guiding, motivating and developing less-experienced team members to reach their potential
HSE Compliance: Ensuring compliance with health, safety and environmental directives, implementing regulations, and monitoring and reporting progress and results

4. Production Manager Job Summary

Workflow Management: Support creative production for the region and manage workflow
Requirement Assessment: Work with internal points of contact to determine the volume of production and deliverables required
Deliverable Review: Review and understand all contracted production deliverables, allocated budgets and deadlines
Collaborator Supervision: Identify collaborators that can effectively provide production support for the creative needs of the region, be their main point of contact and supervise their work
Process Management: Work with the Senior Creative Lead and applicable stakeholders to establish and manage efficient processes for production projects
Client Communication: Manage client communication on key projects
Budget Oversight: Manage production shoot, budgets and invoices, ensuring the Finance team receives all invoices and billing information
Data Entry: Manage all IBMS data entry following the release of allocations/worklists
Asset Management: Point person for all produced assets, quality control checks of said assets and delivery to broadcast/playout and relevant parties

5. Production Manager Accountabilities

Resource Planning: Planning activities and organisation of resources including shifts, to achieve targets
Process Improvement: Planning process/improvement activities
Safety Monitoring: Promote and monitor health, safety, and environmental initiatives
Performance Communication: Ensure open communication among all interested parties with respect to performance measurement
Business Understanding: Understanding business processes, costs, and performance measures
Issue Resolution: Identify and resolve new product-related problems and issues
Target Achievement: Taking appropriate action to ensure outcomes, objectives and targets are met
Performance Reporting: Preparing and submitting performance reports to the Operations Director
Staff Leadership: Providing leadership to staff
Operations Contribution: Contributing to the achievement of all operations department objectives
Duty Execution: Carrying out all activities on the duties list for the role

6. Production Manager Functions

Inventory Management: Organize and maintain yard inventory
Transaction Accuracy: Ensure shipment and inventory transaction accuracy
Employee Training: Communicate job expectations and train/coach employees
Staffing Planning: Determine staffing levels and assign workload
Stakeholder Communication: Interface with upper management, customers, drivers, and employees to answer questions and solve problems
Process Improvement: Identify areas of improvement and establish or adjust work procedures and practices
Safety Management: Maintain a safe working environment

7. Production Manager Job Description

Safety Compliance: Ensure the manufacturing floor complies with health and safety regulations
Quality Control: Ensure quality standards are being met in all areas of the production process
Culture Building: Promote a company culture that encourages top performance and high morale
System Development: Develop, implement and oversee all production systems, procedures and staffing
Team Coordination: Coordinate with other teams to implement strategies and cross-training efforts
Equipment Maintenance: Partner with the Maintenance team to ensure equipment is regularly maintained for safe and efficient operations
Leadership Example: Lead by example in manufacturing areas
Training Assessment: Work with production staff to determine training needs and process improvements
Schedule Management: Manage production scheduling for maximum workforce efficiency and on-time delivery
Budget Management: Establish and manage production budget
Cost Reduction: Identify and implement cost-saving measures
SOP Development: Develop and follow standard operating procedures in compliance with regulatory and company requirements
KPI Tracking: Establish, monitor and track KPIs, reporting performance against plan to upper management
Staff Planning: Assist in staff planning, hiring, and onboarding
Employee Coaching: Develop, supervise and provide coaching to direct reports

8. Production Manager Overview

Department Knowledge: Expected to have the knowledge and capabilities to perform all duties in the entire department
Machine Setup Leadership: Leads and directs staff in the daily setup of machinery according to the production schedule and standards
Safety Promotion: Promotes safe work practices and a safe work environment and encourages employees to reduce and eliminate safety issues
KPI Management: Responsible for monitoring and reporting KPIs and developing, communicating, and coaching employees on KPI
Downtime Reduction: Monitors and recommends strategies to reduce production downtime
Schedule Execution: Executes production schedule as assigned by the Plant Manager
Budget Oversight: Prepares and manages department budget, in collaboration with the Plant Manager
SOP Management: Approves, reviews, and updates SOP/WI and ensures training, communication, and adherence department-wide
Training Delivery: Ensures proper employee trainings are provided
Timecard Approval: Reviews and approves employee timecards and PTO requests
Overtime Control: Manages department overtime hours with direction from the Plant Manager
Hiring Evaluation: Performs job interviews and evaluates prospective new hires
HR Communication: Communicates with HR on staffing concerns or employee issues
Status Change Processing: Completes all employee status change forms
Cross-Department Communication: Possesses the ability to effectively work and communicate across multiple departments and with multiple team members
Expectation Communication: Communicates all expectations, issues, objectives, and goals to the production team
GMP Compliance: Ensures compliance with GMP audit and resolves, corrects, or addresses outstanding issues monthly
Food Safety Compliance: Ensures adherence to all food safety standards and regulations set by Quality Assurance or management
Manager Backup: Serves as backup for the Plant Manager

9. Production Manager Details and Accountabilities

Leadership Coaching: Provide coaching and mentoring to area team members to help realize gains associated with process improvement and culture evolution.
Production Management: Meet production targets and proactively identify potential issues that prevent the site or area from meeting these objectives.
Operational Execution: Drive delivery of site objectives, operational improvements, metrics tracking, and adoption of best practices, leveraging team members and peers.
Safety Compliance: Ensure adherence to robust Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) and Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) programs.
Policy Compliance: Support compliance with global stewardship and corporate quality management procedures and policies, in addition to crop-level and site-specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
Continuous Improvement: Manage all activities for continuous improvement and performance enhancement.
Communication Facilitation: Facilitate cross-site communication by interfacing between the plant, field leadership, and personnel.
Operations Review: Lead Daily Operations Reviews (DOR) with Shift Leads.
Visual Management: Take local VM board components and apply them to the site leadership level to meet daily production requirements.
Problem Solving: Support problem-solving and improvement projects initiated through various methods including OEE analysis, 5S, DDS (Daily Direction Setting), gap analysis (5 WHY's), and facilitate implementation.

10. Production Manager Tasks

Leadership Coaching: Coach and mentor department supervisors to keep them in line with management goals.
Government Relations: Manage all issues and interactions with the government in conjunction with the Plant Manager and Assistant Plant Manager.
Process Management: Direct the processing of assigned products consistent with scheduled requirements, cost standards, safety requirements, environmental, quality, maintenance, sanitation, and food safety specifications to assure maximum output at the lowest possible costs.
Organization Development: Maintain an effective plant organization to assure maximum utilization and development of employees.
Financial Execution: Implement plans to achieve plant financial targets and goals.
Training Management: Organize development and training.
Safety Advocacy: Serve as a facility champion for company-wide safety programs and inclusion processes.

11. Production Manager Roles

Regional Operations: Ensuring smooth and effective operation in the region.
Security Monitoring: Monitoring the security, identifying unsafe situations and taking precautions against them.
Recruits Training: Training the recruits and participating in their orientation.
Plan Fulfillment: Ensuring completion of the production plan.
Production Operations: Ensuring full and smooth operation in the production area with respect to the conduct of the production and filling lines, the function of the mixers.
Shift Management: Maintaining start-up and operation controls, continuing the work during the shift change.
Changeover Guidance: Guiding people through a changeover situation and focusing on the transition speed.
Problem Response: Taking fast and solution-oriented actions on abnormalities and problems.
Technical Maintenance: Handling minor technical maintenance works.
TPM Leadership: Playing an active leadership role in TPM activities and TPM workshops.
Department Mediation: Acting as a mediator between shift supervisors and other departments.
Area Monitoring: Monitoring the smooth operation of the production area.
Team Management: Manages and trains (technical toolbox) team members - secures the standard work (security, quality, traceability, service, production).

12. Production Manager Additional Details

Process Oversight: Oversee manufacturing processes and procedures.
Process Improvement: Change and introduce new improvements in processes and prepare working instructions.
Client Satisfaction: Improving effectiveness in terms of satisfying client demands.
Cross Collaboration: Work collaboratively with the warehouse, procurement, printing sections or other departments that support or depend on the manufacturing operations.
Staffing Management: Maintaining appropriate staffing levels to meet business needs.
Leadership Direction: Provide leadership and direction to maintenance, quality control and different production departments and team members.
Safety Assurance: Ensure the safest possible work environment for team members while driving safety programs to meet this objective.

13. Production Manager Essential Functions

Safety Compliance: Ensure team compliance with all safety policies and procedures.
Quality Sanitation: Maintain product quality and sanitation standards.
Operational Efficiency: Optimize operational efficiencies to support the production, warehouse, and shipping of products.
Operational Improvement: Identify and oversee operational improvements necessary to deliver the site's annual operating plan (AOP).
Cost Management: Ensure cost performance gaps are identified, action plans are developed and resources are properly allocated.
Trend Monitoring: Track operational output measures (i.e., efficiency, yield loss, product quality, inventory accuracy, transactional accuracy), anticipating and correcting trends that would compromise achievement of financial targets.
Team Development: Develop a team to solve day-to-day operational issues and reach short- and long-term performance goals.
Change Leadership: Deliver effective change leadership to drive business changes while minimizing the impact.
Cross Collaboration: Communicate and collaborate cross-functionally to assist the team in solving operational issues.
Team Motivation: Motivate team members to achieve the plan's goals.
Capability Building: Builds people capability through effective employee relations, hiring, training, and communication for front-line hourly and salaried personnel.
Plan Flexibility: Flex production plans on a shift-by-shift basis to prevent service issues and operational inefficiencies.
Material Optimization: Optimize ingredient and packaging material usage to minimize scrap loss.
Policy Compliance: Ensure compliance with company policies, contracts and procedures.
Operations Leadership: Lead and motivate the operations team in a manner consistent with the site's Vision, Mission, and Guiding Principles.
Continuous Improvement: Coach teams to demonstrate continuous improvement in profitability margins, efficiencies and cost savings initiatives.
Team Development: Lead the organization in the development of natural work teams.
Policy Administration: Administer policies and procedures.

14. Production Manager Role Purpose

People Development: Responsible for the performance and development of people, managing individual performance and holding individuals accountable for their results through vision setting and performance feedback.
Change Advocacy: Acting as a positive change agent for continued capability development and improvement within the Market-Based Management (MBM®) culture.
Safety Environment: Creating an environment where the team achieves zero significant events in Environmental, Health and Safety.
Asset Performance: Responsible for asset performance to meet facility goals and increase efficiencies.
Team Inspiration: Motivating and inspiring direct reports to achieve results in alignment with the mill vision and goals.
Technology Collaboration: Collaborating with others on new initiatives around technology and automation.
Opportunity Identification: Identify and present improvement opportunities.
Process Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting of process issues.
Supply Management: Responsible for seeing that raw materials and operating supplies are efficiently managed.
Accountability Leadership: Holding the team and individuals accountable for operation and reliability strategies.
Staff Scheduling: Ensuring adequate scheduling of staff.

15. Production Manager General Responsibilities

Safety Compliance: Ensuring all safety and health standards are met to keep an organization accident-free.
Management Communication: Communicating regularly with upper management regarding problems or issues impacting production.
Resource Evaluation: Evaluating machine resources to ensure continued production and minimal downtime.
Cost Productivity: Establishing a balance between increased productivity and reduced costs of manufacturing operations.
Goal Setting: Setting productivity goals for each manufacturing team.
Workflow Development: Developing workflow policies and procedures that improve efficiency without compromising safety or quality.
Staff Scheduling: Ensuring adequate scheduling of staff.

16. Production Manager Key Accountabilities

Collaborative Leadership: Provides a collaborative leadership approach to a team of Supervisors to deliver required production results to achieve or surpass area KPI targets consistently within the established controls, operational and health and safety standards.
Routing Planning: Responsible for developing and executing routing plans based on capacity and efficiencies to support the production requirements.
Obstacle Anticipation: Anticipates and recognizes potential obstacles in areas of responsibility and creates alternative contingency plans.
Report Management: Supports the DC by ensuring reports are accurate and disseminated in a timely fashion.
Equipment Tracking: Ensures the carrier and vendor equipment is tracked and returned to reduce cost.
Target Setting: Considers DC rack capacity, inbound flow by ladder-plan and production needs when establishing daily and weekly inbound targets.
Production Forecasting: Responsible for managing production, forecasting variances and seasonal fluctuations and ensuring effective execution of established targets and production plans.
Data Analysis: Integrates and accurately analyzes data and information to determine optimal solutions and allocation of resources.
Innovation Encouragement: Maintains a cross-functional mindset and encourages innovation and risk-taking within the teams to continuously define production improvement efficiencies for better results.
Priority Management: Manages and shifts concentration on set priorities and ensures execution within priority sequences and established timeframes.
Flow Leadership: Leads and addresses facility inter-dependencies and customer implications of process and business changes, ensuring balance of production flow.
Relationship Building: Builds effective collaborative relationships with internal and interdependent business partners to achieve mutual goals.
Safety Compliance: Ensures all health and safety and established work methods are adhered to.

17. Production Manager Roles and Details

Operational Responsibility: Overall operational responsibility for the delivery of the performance of the production syrup room, raw materials and ingredients flow and inventory management teams.
Scheduling Optimization: Manage the line scheduling and short-term planning team to optimize throughput and conversion of raw materials into finished goods and to ensure minimal downtime on the packaging lines.
Safety Rolemodelling: Setting the benchmark standard by role modelling health and safety behaviour with the team.
Safety Leadership: Leading a preventative and proactive safety culture and ensuring employees and contractors adhere to all safety policies and procedures.
Operational Excellence: Improve and embed operational excellence through effective site routines, with a huge focus on data-driven decisions, leading continuous improvement of processes, productivity and efficiency across the production lines.
Budget Management: Manage production line performance budget (labour, productivity, yields, asset care).
Quality Efficiency: Achieve the highest quality and efficiency outcomes to deliver the product at the optimal cost.
Talent Development: Participate in workforce planning, recruitment and selection and capability development to attract, develop and retain capability and talent.

18. Production Manager Responsibilities and Key Tasks

KPI Management: Take a KPI or metric-driven approach to achieve the organizational goals and objectives.
Bottleneck Resolution: Achieve the weekly and monthly build plans by attacking bottlenecks and addressing availability, yield and efficiency issues cross-functionally.
Strategy Execution: Strategy planning and execution for achieving the short- and long-term goals of the organization.
Leadership Development: Hire, coach, lead and develop Associate Managers, Supervisors and Leads.
Rootcause Coaching: Coach the team on root cause analysis, problem solving and first principle thinking.
Work Compliance: Maintain a culture of adherence to standardized work and compliance with documented processes and procedures to ensure safe practices and building products to quality spec are sustained.
Lean Improvement: Coach the team on lean manufacturing and drive continuous improvement relentlessly.
Process Implementation: Work cross-functionally to implement process changes, new product introductions, improvement projects and corrective actions expeditiously.
Team Performance: Build a high-performing team, set clear expectations and manage their performance effectively.
Morale Building: Work with HR and the production leaders to improve the morale of the team and create an environment in which associates want to come to work and perform at the highest level.

19. Production Manager Duties and Roles

Workflow Organization: Organizing workflow to meet specifications and deadlines.
Cost Estimation: Estimates cost and budgets.
Manager Coordination: Coordinating with other managers to formulate objectives and understand requirements.
Performance Direction: Direct personnel towards maximum performance.
Decision Solving: Decision making and problem-solving.
Personnel Evaluation: Evaluate the performance of production personnel.
Sales Achievement: Meet or exceed sales and profitable targets.
Team Management: Develop and manage team, including operations, technical and support functions.
Sales Strategy: Responsible for developing a long-term strategy for sales growth in target market segments.
Process Innovation: Developing and implementing product and process innovations in conjunction with corporate resources.
Center Strategy: Develop competence center strategies and execute plans to meet objectives.
Target Achievement: Meet and exceed monthly and strategic business targets.
Planning Control: Planning, cost control, cost reduction, budgeting, people management and project management.
Sales Collaboration: Work closely with Division, Production Partners, Commercial teams, and Global Partners to grow sales and profits.

20. Assistant Production Manager Roles and Responsibilities

Production Scheduling: Creates a schedule for all phases of production and helps assign 2D and 3D artists to the work.
Task Management: Helps create and maintain task assignments for the teams.
Staffing Anticipation: Anticipates potential staffing changes based on development or creative shifts through the show.
Notes Management: Maintains and publishes information regarding client notes and changes in planned work for Supervisors and artists.
Supervisor Support: Provides support to VFX and show supervisors.
Priority Coordination: Helps manage the task assignments and priorities for the 2D and 3D teams.
Resource Allocation: Manages daily digital resource utilization and acts as the primary contact on the production team regarding the allocation of show resources.
Team Communication: Communicates daily with the team regarding changes to priorities, etc.