Executive Search Success Story: Building a Robotics and AI Vision Leadership Team for a Private-Equity-Backed Fresh Prepared Foods Manufacturer

How JRG Partners executed a confidential, multi-role North American executive search strategy that equipped a private-equity-backed fresh-cut produce and prepared meals manufacturer with the manufacturing technology, automation engineering, robotics integration, AI vision, and program leadership required to robotize assembly and inspection of short-shelf-life products, raise quality consistency, and deliver the sponsor’s margin plan.

The Challenge

A private equity sponsor’s fresh prepared foods company assembled salad kits, meal kits, and refrigerated meals by hand across seven plants, with hundreds of short-run SKUs, daily changeovers, and labor costs at 28% of revenue. Manual inspection missed foreign material and portion variability that triggered retailer complaints and withdrawals, and the sponsor’s value-creation plan assumed automation savings the company had no capability to deliver because conventional fixed automation could not handle variable fresh products. Executive leadership and the sponsor identified several critical vulnerabilities threatening the plan:

• Manual assembly across seven plants with labor at 28% of revenue
• Hundreds of short-run SKUs and daily changeovers unsuited to conventional fixed automation
• Foreign material and portion variability escaping manual inspection, causing retailer complaints and withdrawals
• No robotics, machine vision, or AI capability in the engineering organization
• A value-creation plan dependent on automation savings with no delivery capability
• Short shelf life leaving no tolerance for automation-related downtime

Recognizing that the plan required leadership from the frontier of flexible food robotics, the sponsor and CEO engaged JRG Partners to recruit a Chief Manufacturing Technology Officer, Vice President of Automation Engineering, Vice President of Robotics Integration, Vice President of AI Vision & Quality Systems, and Vice President of Automation Program Management. The company required an executive search partner with deep food automation expertise and access to leaders in robotics and machine vision.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

Food & Beverage Automation & Robotics Focus

JRG Partners maintains a dedicated practice serving food and beverage manufacturers deploying automation and robotics, with a clear understanding of flexible robotics for variable products, AI vision inspection, and the leadership profiles that automate fresh and prepared foods.

Robotics and Machine Vision Talent Access

Our firm has extensive experience recruiting executives from food robotics, machine vision, and automation technology companies into food manufacturers, bringing frontier capability to operations.

Private Equity Portfolio Experience

Our team works routinely with sponsors on automation leadership builds tied to value-creation plans, with a clear understanding of savings underwriting and delivery timelines.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Value-Creation Plan Alignment

Our consultants partnered directly with the sponsor’s operating partner, CEO, and board to review labor and quality data, SKU complexity, plant conditions, the automation savings assumptions, and timeline, defining five executive profiles aligned with the value-creation plan.

Phase 2 — Talent Identification & Mapping

Our research team performed an extensive talent mapping initiative targeting manufacturing technology, automation engineering, robotics, AI vision, and program executives at fresh and prepared foods manufacturers, food robotics and machine vision companies, and automation integrators who had led documented flexible automation deployments. Over 380 executives were systematically assessed across these sectors.

Phase 3 — Candidate Engagement

Priority during outreach was given to leaders with a documented history of deploying flexible robotics for variable food products, implementing AI vision inspection and foreign material detection, integrating robotics in high-changeover environments, managing multi-plant automation programs, and delivering underwritten savings under private equity ownership. Only candidates meeting these strict performance baselines advanced.

Phase 4 — Selection Process

Finalists presented automation plans to the sponsor, CEO, and board, completed structured leadership assessments, and underwent reference verification focused on quantified automation, quality, and savings outcomes.

Key Outcomes

• 380+ food manufacturing, robotics, and machine vision executive profiles mapped across North America.
• Successfully placed a synchronized leadership tier spanning manufacturing technology, automation engineering, robotics integration, AI vision, and program management within seven months.
• Deployed AI-guided robotic assembly across five plants with changeovers under ten minutes.
• Reduced retailer complaints by 75% and eliminated product withdrawals.
• Delivered 90 automation cells on schedule with no shelf-life losses.
• Reduced labor from 28% to 19% of revenue with $85M in annualized savings.