Quality Improvement Specialist

Job Overview

Open Country Dairy Ltd is seeking a Quality Improvement Specialist to become a key part of its Quality team in Auckland. This role operates under the Group Quality Manager and focuses on enhancing quality processes across various sites and products by integrating operational quality assurance, product release coordination, complaint handling, and improvement tracking.

Core Responsibilities

• Manage customer complaint workflows and keep detailed records
• Assist in investigations including root cause analysis and corrective actions
• Oversee product release procedures along with hold and release record maintenance
• Monitor and track improvements related to complaints, audits, and non-conformance events
• Support technical quality initiatives such as shelf-life studies
• Create and maintain quality reports, dashboards, and aggregated data summaries
• Detect and analyze trends and recurring issues to generate follow-up strategies
• Collaborate with quality assurance, operations, supply chain, labs, and other relevant departments
• Provide administrative assistance for vendor approval and periodic reviews as needed

Candidate Profile

• Background in quality assurance, food production, dairy processing, technical administration, or product release coordination
• Excellent administrative, reporting, and data handling capabilities
• Strong attention to detail when working with technical documentation
• Proven experience managing coordination across multiple stakeholders
• Effective written and oral communication skills
• Self-driven with a proactive attitude towards task follow-up and deadline adherence

Prior exposure to product release processes, customer complaint systems, laboratory environments, shelf-life testing, Power BI, Smart Food Safe, or ERP software will be beneficial.

The ideal candidate is organised, meticulous, comfortable with escalating issues appropriately, and genuinely motivated to drive quality improvements throughout the organisation.