PCO & ML Associate

Description

Job Summary: The PCO Associate Accountant supports product costing activities for manufacturing plants, ensuring production cost accuracy and collaborating with cross-functional teams. Key Highlights: 1. Key support in product costing activities within manufacturing. 2. Cross-functional collaboration to ensure data accuracy. 3. Opportunity to shape the future of global food. **About Kerry** Kerry is the global leader in taste and nutrition 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 across 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 issues, ensure accurate data, and support the launch of new products.**Key responsibilities** **Review process orders**, including validation of variances, confirmations, reworks, 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 review. **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** launched at assigned manufacturing sites, including recipe validation and cost estimation 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 cost flow issues in SAP. **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/Solution Partner Focus:** High responsiveness and prioritization ability * **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