Head of Planning

Head of Planning

Job Purpose:

The effective day-to-day co-ordination of sales, forecasts, stocks, meat and materials supply and capacities to achieve a production plan that achieves and maintains agreed stock levels and customer service.

To provide support and cover in all other Planning functions and play an active role as part of the site management team.

The role of Head of Planning is accountable for the performance of the sites planning/scheduling teams which manage the planning activities across both factories on site.

The Role and Responsibilities:

• Work in close partnership with sales, customers and operations to provide a daily and weekly production plan that maximises factory efficiency (e.g. minimising changeovers and stock-outs) and delivers customer orders on time and in full.
• Working in partnership with purchasing, HR, sales and operations to build long term plans based around customer insight, promotional plans and operational capacity for both production, labour/resourcing and raw material sourcing.
• Work in partnership with sales, customers, purchasing, logistics and operations to provide a daily and weekly raw material plan that minimizes costs and stock-holding and delivers customer orders on time and in full.
• To act as a key liaison point between operations, sales and customers communicating production versus plan and formulating an appropriate response to address fluctuations in production and/or orders; e.g. saying yes or no to whether orders can be fulfilled and have an input into the NPD process.
• Responsible for the management of stock holding and write offs.
• Lead the weekly S&OPs meeting in relation to launches, delists and promotions.
• Manage the Planning Team, giving direction, development (skills and succession), motivating, coaching and counselling as necessary to encourage them to achieve the performance targets.
• Review and develop the planning processes and policies in order to drive continuous improvement and remove non-value adding activity.
• To support and actively participate in continuous improvement activities to improve the site performance in all areas of the business.
• Reporting on variances to forecast to the relevant demand planner and/or National Account Manager.
• Raising and maintaining of production schedules to ensure absolute accuracy and adherence.
• Daily control of stock levels, inclusive of Work In Progress stocks, within agreed parameters.
• Liaising daily with production to ensure full understanding and agreement of plans. Chairing meetings where appropriate.
• Daily reporting of attainments to plan to Site Director and SMT.
• Maintaining production run rates within all systems.
• Monitoring of Held Stocks ensuring swift decisions from relevant departments.
• Adherence to reporting procedures for service level failures and excess stocks.
• Effective use of current computer systems and identifying development and improvement needs, implementing where and when appropriate.
• Effective meat balancing from birds available, considering cost, demand and availability.
• Reporting and resolving any issues with excess meat or stocks.
• Ensuring materials availability to achieve plans.
• Understanding of, and reasonable competence in, materials, demand planning other production planning roles.
• Communicate, liaise and escalate issues with the Site Director where necessary.

Person Criteria - Key Skills, Experience and Knowledge:

• Experience of building production plans with products with short shelf life/seasonal products and requiring intensive labour usage.
• Demonstrable excellence in managing the different needs of customers, operations and sales in a very fast paced environment and building and communicating effective solutions.
• Proven experience of successfully managing a team including performance management, conduct, adherence to company policies and procedures including disciplinary, grievance and attendance issues.
• Ability to clearly communicate and build a strong and effective team including presentation skills, coaching, influencing and the ability to deal appropriately with conflict.
• Excellent planning and organisational skills.
• Ability to problem solve and make effective decisions in fluid and changing situations.
• Self-motivated and highly resilient.
• High level of IT skills including advanced Excel skills.
• FMCG experience.
• High level of numeracy to be able to calculate and report on performance.

How to apply

If this really sounds like you and you want to be considered for the Head of Planning position send your CV to bobby@recruitment-wolf.co.uk.

On applying for this job, you consent to Recruitment Wolf Limited holding your details on file to be able to contact you about your job search.

We aim to contact you within 24 hours on the assumption that your credentials fit the requirements for the role.