Project Manager – LTO Commercialization
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Location: Oakbrook, IL
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Reports To: Vice President – Integration & Quality
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Company: Trillium Foods
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Position Overview:
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Trillium Foods is seeking a hands-on, results-driven Project Manager to coordinate the commercialization and execution of limited-time offers, seasonal products, and other accelerated customer launches across our manufacturing facilities.
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This position will serve as the dedicated project manager for LTO commercialization and will work in parallel with the Project Manager responsible for core-business commercialization. The existing commercialization Project Manager will continue to lead recurring commercialization meetings and manage core-business projects. The LTO Project Manager will participate in those meetings, own the detailed tracking and follow-up for LTO milestones, and coordinate with plant and corporate teams between meetings.
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The ideal candidate is highly organized, detail-oriented, assertive, and comfortable staying close to the details of each project. This individual must be willing to dig into open items, ask questions across functional areas, verify assumptions, drive follow-up, and maintain momentum across multiple projects with compressed timelines.
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Key Responsibilities:
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- Serve as the dedicated project manager for LTOs, seasonal products, and other accelerated commercialization projects across all manufacturing facilities.
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- Manage the detailed commercialization process hands-on from initial feasibility through costing, product development, material readiness, plant trials, customer approval, launch readiness, and initial production.
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- Build and maintain detailed project plans, timelines, trackers, and portfolio views based on required customer launch dates.
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- Track project milestones, deliverables, owners, dependencies, decisions, and required completion dates; follow up directly with project owners between commercialization meetings.
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- Identify missing information, unclear ownership, conflicting assumptions, resource constraints, and timing risks, and escalate issues before they affect customer commitments.
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- Participate in recurring commercialization meetings, present clear LTO status updates, and document LTO-specific actions, owners, due dates, risks, and decisions.
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- Partner with the core-business Project Manager to maintain consistent project-management tools, processes, and expectations across the commercialization portfolio.
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- Coordinate project activities across Commercial, R&D, Supply Chain, Planning, Plant Purchasing, Operations, Quality, and Finance, while ensuring functional teams retain ownership of their respective deliverables.
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- Coordinate readiness reviews before customer samples, plant trials, qualification runs, and initial commercial production.
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- Work closely with Supply Chain, R&D, Planning, Commercial, Operations, and plant buyers to translate formulas, bills of material, projected case volumes, pack configurations, trial plans, and production assumptions into ingredient and packaging requirements.
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- Partner with Supply Chain and plant buyers to confirm material quantities, supplier lead times, required delivery dates, inventory availability, and documented assumptions, including yield, scrap, trial usage, contingency needs, and customer-specific requirements.
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- Stay actively engaged with Supply Chain when formulas, forecasts, production plans, or customer timelines change, and coordinate review of speculative purchases, excess inventory, or customer-specific material exposure.
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- Maintain standardized LTO project plans, action trackers, material-planning tools, risk logs, and readiness checklists; lead post-launch reviews and incorporate lessons learned into future projects.
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Qualifications:
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- Bachelor’s degree required; degree in Business, Supply Chain, Operations, Food Science, Project Management, or a related field preferred.
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- 5–7+ years of experience in project management, commercialization, supply chain, operations, or a related function within food manufacturing or CPG.
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- Proven success managing new product commercialization, customer launches, seasonal programs, or limited time offers in a manufacturing environment.
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- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional initiatives, ask effective questions, and drive accountability with minimal oversight and without direct authority.
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- Strong understanding of manufacturing commercialization and supply chain/material-planning concepts, including formulas, bills of material, projected volumes, yields, supplier lead times, minimum order quantities, inventory exposure, and delivery timing.
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- Strong technical skills in Microsoft Office Suite and project-management platforms such as Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Asana, or equivalent.
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- Outstanding verbal and written communication skills; comfortable leading discussions, summarizing complex issues, and escalating risks at all levels of the organization.
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- Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, and time-management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects on compressed timelines.
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- Ability to travel occasionally to manufacturing facilities
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Trillium Foods provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind, in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local laws.