Role purpose

• Lead the planning and coordination of commercial seed production activities which includes grower contracting, planting, detasseling and harvesting.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to execute and deliver the Crop Plan in full on time.
• Planning and monitoring Field Operations budget including mobile equipment and materials.

Key responsibilities and tasks

• Lead building and maintaining a reliable and sustainable grower base, to ensure reliable supply of commercial seed to the commercial team within Zambia.
• Lead analytics for field processes, to ensure the correct decisions for planning and liaise closely with Field and Plant Management teams.
• Lead the planning and coordination of production activities, Grower contracting, Planting, Detasseling and Harvesting and distribution across the geographies.
• Lead the coordination with seed growers to ensure a smooth transition and flow of product from field to plant.
• Lead HSE efforts according ISO45001 standards focusing on legal compliance and identifying safety risks applying the HIRA methodology.
• Lead the development, update and compliance with quality assurance standards and management system set by ISO9001:2015
• Create, manage and continual tracking and compliance of the Operational budgets.
• Identify and deploy operational improvement, tracking and best practices and processes to continually seek improvements in reliability and cost efficiencies.
• Promote and coordinate the Velocity data management tool, to effectively analyze and utilize field data to manage productions effectively. This extends to new technology deployment.
• Manage Velocity and SAP data, to ensure correctness for contracting and field processes.
• Utilize onePSS as a platform to implement best practices, for example, Visual Management to track Operations KPI`s by leading Tier 2 field meeting and participate in the Tier 3 Site Lead meetings.
• Actively laisse with Government and Seed certification bodies in industry decision making
• Increase end-to-end operational efficiency and advance customer experience through continuous improvement initiatives
• Promote and implement best practices with focus on Quality and Reliability to improve them every year.

Experience, Skills, and Qualifications 

• Minimum a diploma or bachelor’s degree in agronomy or 10 years’ experience in seed production.
• Fluent in English and Kiswahil
• MS Office software (Excel, E-mail, Word, Project etc.)
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Results focused with ability to work on own initiative
• Strong teamwork development capability (flexibility to work across the areas and positively influence others)
• Establish clear direction
• Effective and timely decision making