Plant Controller

What You'll Own

Cost Accounting

• Maintain and refine the standard cost system: material, labor, burden, and overhead rates
  

• Develop and validate machine-hour and labor-hour burden rates by work center
  

• Analyze and explain manufacturing variances — purchase price, material usage, labor efficiency, overhead absorption — and drive them to root cause with operations
  

• Job-level and project-level costing: estimate vs. actual, margin at completion, and the story behind the gap
  

• Support pricing, make-vs-buy, and capital investment decisions with real cost data
  

Team & Approval Authority

• Manage, develop, and review the work of two staff accountants — assign close responsibilities, set review standards, and build their capability over time
  

• Own the plant's purchasing approval workflow: review and approve purchase requisitions and POs within delegated authority, and escalate above-threshold items to corporate with a clear recommendation
  

• Administer the capital expenditure approval process from request through authorization — verify business case, cost basis, and payback assumptions before anything moves forward
  

• Verify and sign off on analyses prepared by staff and by operations before they go to plant leadership or corporate
  

Financial Stewardship & Advisory

• Act as financial advisor to the plant executive team — bring analysis, options, and consequences to decisions on capacity, staffing, pricing, sourcing, outsourcing, and capital before they are committed
  

• Protect the integrity of AFL's financial results and safeguard the assets behind them: inventory, equipment, and the processes that touch cash
  

• Question operating decisions the numbers do not support, and require an assumption set, cost basis, and payback on any proposal that spends money
  

• Be the independent financial voice in the room — willing to be the only dissent when the analysis calls for it, and to carry that view to corporate finance when it is not resolved at the plant
  

• Translate operating decisions into their P&L, cash, and balance sheet effect so leadership sees the full cost before committing
  

• Surface risk, exposure, and unfavorable trends to plant leadership and corporate early and directly
  

Inventory

• Own inventory accounting end to end: raw steel, consumables, WIP, and finished goods
  

• Run the cycle count program and lead physical inventories; investigate and resolve shrink and count variances
  

• Monitor inventory valuation, obsolescence, and reserve adequacy
  

• Partner with purchasing and production control on turns, scrap, and material yield
  

Close, Reporting & Controls

• Lead the plant month-end close and deliver results to corporate on schedule
  

• Produce the plant P&L with meaningful commentary — not just numbers, but what happened and what we are doing about it
  

• Build and report operational KPIs: cost per ton, throughput, labor utilization, scrap rate, on-time production
  

• Maintain internal controls over inventory, receiving, production reporting, and fixed assets
  

• Manage intercompany transactions and shared-facility cost allocations (AAS co-location, MSH facility lease, corporate charges)
  

• Maintain reporting integrity and accounting policy compliance as defined by corporate finance, independent of plant operating pressures
  

• Support external audit requests and corporate consolidation
  

• Own the plant's capital expenditure tracking and fixed asset records
  

Planning

• Build the annual plant operating budget and rolling forecasts
  

• Model capacity, headcount, and overhead scenarios for plant leadership
  

• Flag risk early — before it shows up in a variance report