Maintenance Planner

|Manufacturing & Trades - Maintenance Planning & Reliability|New Zealand

The Company: Whittaker’s is New Zealand’s biggest chocolate manufacturer and has won New Zealand’s ‘Most Trusted Brand’ 14 times in a row. They live by the belief that ‘best is always better’, insisting on using only the finest ingredients, the best methods, most precise machinery, and the best people to keep making good honest chocolate.
 
The Opportunity: Whittaker’s are seeking an experienced Maintenance Planner to drive predictive, preventative, and breakdown maintenance across a busy manufacturing site. You’ll be responsible for developing and maintaining robust maintenance plans, managing the CMMS, coordinating shutdowns and ensuring critical spare parts are available to minimise downtime. This role is central to improving plant uptime, reliability and overall maintenance performance. You’ll work closely with engineers, production and the wider maintenance team to deliver effective planning, inventory control and CI outcomes.

Tasks will include but are not limited to:

  • Planning, scheduling and prioritising corrective and preventative maintenance tasks
  • Managing work orders, assets and documentation in the CMMS
  • Coordinating plant shutdowns
  • Ensuring availability of parts, tools and materials including conducting regular stock takes and creating purchase orders
  • Increasing plant uptime and improving equipment reliability
  • Identification of critical spares and single points of failure
  • Training staff in CMMS usage and best practices
  • Participating in criticality analysis and reliability strategies

 
You, the Candidate: With experience being both on and off the tools, the ideal candidate will bring a high level of technical competence, along with strong skills in data analysis, organisation, relationship building, and the ability to work under pressure, where time management and a cool-head is essential!

The ideal candidate will also bring the following skills and attributes:

  • A qualification in a related field (engineering, planning) desirable
  • 3-5 years’ experience in a similar maintenance planning role, ideally within an FMCG/Manufacturing environment
  • Strong time management and the ability to work under pressure
  • Previous experience using and optimising CMMS and electronic inventory systems
  • Excellent relationship and stakeholder management skills
  • A proactive approach to continuous improvement

 
This is an excellent opportunity to join a company that is truly passionate about their product and people. If you are looking for a role where you can contribute to planning smarter maintenance, prevent breakdowns and lift plant reliability through strong systems, scheduling and proactive decision-making, then this is the role for you.
 
Apply: To apply for this role, please select the relevant “Apply” button”. Alternatively, please contact Maya Carpenter-Salvador on maya@trs.co.nz with a copy of your CV. We look forward to hearing from you!

Please note: To be eligible for this role, you must hold current working rights in NZ. You must also be willing to undertake and return a satisfactory Ministry of Justice Criminal History check and undergo a pre-employment medical including a Drug & Alcohol Screening.