Plant Operations Controller - Norican Czech

• Serve as the on-site finance business partner to plant operations, providing clear financial insight into production performance, cost drivers, productivity, inventory, and working capital (inventory and procurement areas).
• Act as the key plant finance interface with the Global Finance Services function, ensuring required inputs, explanations, reconciliations, and operational context are provided timely and accurately.
• Review plant financial results prepared through the shared finance model, validate operational accuracy, and explain key variances to plant and global operation leadership.
• Analyse operational and financial performance against budget, forecast, standards, and prior periods; identify root causes of variances and partner with operations to define corrective actions.
• Calculation of labour and overhead rates.
• Monitor of standard costs creation and review of related variances, analysis of production variances, including project variances, absorption, scrap, rework, review of inventory valuation, and margin analysis.
• Produce plant performance dashboards and KPIs, including productivity, labour efficiency, material usage, overhead spending, inventory turns, slow-moving inventory, on-time delivery impact, and cost savings.
• Support daily, weekly, and monthly operational reviews by translating financial data into practical insights for plant leadership and shop-floor management.
• Partner with production, supply chain, purchasing, and quality teams to identify cost reduction opportunities, improve process efficiency, and strengthen operational execution.
• Lead the plant input process for annual budget, rolling forecast, and long-range planning.
• Challenge plant spending, headcount, overtime, scrap, freight, inventory levels, and other controllable cost areas to drive financial accountability.
• Support inventory management through cycle count analysis, physical inventory coordination, excess and obsolete inventory review, and controls over raw material, work-in-process, and finished goods.
• Review and support capital expenditure requests, business cases, payback analyses, capex project tracking, and post-completion reviews to ensure expected benefits are achieved.
• Maintain and improve internal controls across plant operations, including inventory, purchasing, production reporting, capital assets, and plant-related financial transactions, in coordination with Global Finance Services where applicable.
• Coordinate internal and external audit requirements fro plant-related processes and ensure timely resolution of finding and control gaps.
• Drive process improvements in reporting, controls, forecasting, and operational finance processes to improve decision support across the plant.

Key competencies:

• Operations Partnership: Builds strong working relationships with plant leadership and shop-floor teams and provides practical finance support to improve operational decisions.
• Shared Services Coordination: Works effectively with Global Finance Services to ensure accurate, timely, and well-explained plant financial information.
• Manufacturing Financial Acumen: Demonstrates strong understanding of cost drivers, standard costing, labour and overhead absorption, inventory, scrap, productivity, and margin performance.
• Analytical Thinking: Identifies trends, risks, opportunities, and root causes through data-driven analysis of operational and financial performance.
• Commercial and Operational Discipline: Challenges assumptions, reviews controllable costs, and supports decisions that improve profitability and working capital.
• Accountability: Maintains high standards for accuracy, compliance, timeliness, and ownership of plant financial processes, even when activities are executed through shared services.
• Influencing and Communication: Presents financial and operational information clearly to both finance and non-finance stakeholders and influences action without relying solely on authority.
• Continuous Improvement: Challenges existing processes and drives improvements in reporting, controls, forecasting, and operational performance management across the plant and shared service model.
• Demonstrates Norican’s GROW behaviours: Go Further, Raise the Bar, Own It and Win Together.

What we're looking for:

• Bachelor’s degree in accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a related field.
• CPA, CMA, MBA, or other relevant professional certification are an advantage.
• Minimum of 5 years of progressive finance, accounting, cost accounting, or operations finance experience, preferably in a manufacturing environment.
• Experience operating in a shared services or centralized finance support model, with the ability to coordinate effectively across plant, and Global Finance Services teams.
• Experience with standard costing updates, inventory controls, physical inventory processes, and operational KPI design.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing operations, cost drivers, standard costing, inventory valuation, variance analysis, and plant performance metrics.
• Experience supporting manufacturing operations through budgeting, forecasting, KPI reporting, productivity analysis, and working capital management.
• Experience supporting capital investment analysis, make-versus-buy decisions.
• Experience with ERP systems (FO365 preferred) and advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel; experience with reporting or business intelligence tools is a plus.
• Solid understanding of internal controls, audit processes, accounting principles, and financial compliance requirements.
• Ability to connect financial results with operational activity and communicate insights clearly to finance and non-finance stakeholders.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, business partnering, and influencing skills.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced plant environment and collaborate across production, supply chain, quality, shared services, and leadership teams.

If you are interested in this position, please contact us using the form below or via jobs.cz/prace.cz through the link provided here