PCO & ML Associate

Description

Job Summary: The PCO Associate Accountant supports product costing activities for manufacturing plants in North America, ensuring cost accuracy and collaborating with cross-functional teams. Key Highlights: 1. Opportunity to shape the future of food in a global environment. 2. Ensure production cost accuracy and validate cost flows in SAP. 3. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to resolve costing incidents. **About Kerry** Kerry is the world’s leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. Every day, we partner with our customers to create healthier, tastier, and more sustainable products consumed by billions of people worldwide. Our vision is to be our customers’ most valuable partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career at Kerry offers you the opportunity to shape the future of food, as well as explore and grow within a truly global environment.**About the role** The **PCO Associate Accountant** is responsible for supporting **product costing activities** for manufacturing plants in North America. Their primary function is to ensure production cost accuracy through reviewing and managing process orders, analyzing variances, supporting month-end close, and validating cost flows in SAP. They also collaborate with Plant, Quality, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, and Finance teams to resolve costing incidents, ensure data integrity, and support new product introductions.**Key responsibilities** **Review process orders**, including validation of variances, confirmations, rework, scrap, error resolution, and alignment with plant operations. **Manage the Daily Cockpit and monthly DUV (Daily Usage Variance) reviews** to ensure accuracy and timely issue resolution. **Respond promptly to plant finance queries**, providing basic information on cost variances identified during process order reviews. **Follow up with production teams** on open process orders—including work-in-progress and release status—to ensure timely technical closure. **Collaborate with Quality teams** to complete necessary inspections for process orders ready for technical closure. **Monitor and analyze price variances** between BOM/recipe standards and actual production results for assigned plants. **Ensure accurate costing of New Products** introduced at assigned manufacturing sites, including recipe validation and cost estimate accuracy. **Support master data reviews for materials** relevant to Product Costing processes (costing views, BOM consistency, routing relevance). **Execute PCO-related month-end close activities** for in-scope plants, including settlement and variance analysis. **Apply understanding of the manufacturing process flow** to validate and resolve issues in SAP cost flows. **Apply foundational Operational Excellence (OE) principles**, including JDI, SIA, standard work, and interpretation of operational metrics. **Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners**, including Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Procurement, Recipe Controllers, and Finance Operations (IO), to ensure data accuracy and timely resolution of costing issues.**Qualifications and skills** * **SAP:** Process orders, Material Master (costing views), costing transactions * **MS Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook):** Competent level * **Power BI and BI Launchpad:** Basic level * **Understanding of manufacturing flow and cost structures** * **Digital \& Automation:** Use of Microsoft Copilot, fundamentals of data visualization * **Customer/Sponsor Focus:** High responsiveness and prioritization capability * **Project and Change Management:** Basic knowledge and ability to support project tasks * **Operational Excellence:** Familiarity with OE concepts, KPIs, and basic problem-solving * Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, Industrial Engineering, or related fields * **0.5–2 years of experience** in cost accounting, manufacturing finance, or shared financial services * **Fluent English** required * Experience with **SAP**, preferred