Planning Manager

Responsibilities 

• Lead and develop a team of planners, providing clear direction, coaching, performance management and capability development.
• Review customer demand, forecasts and backlog to establish priorities and optimize production output and customer lead times.
• Develop and maintain realistic production plans aligned with customer demand, capacity, material availability and business priorities.
• Ensure timely material availability to support production schedules and customer requirements.
• Work closely with Procurement, Suppliers and Warehouse teams to manage material lead times, shortages and delivery risks.
• Partner closely with Manufacturing, Procurement, Engineering, Quality, Logistics and Customer Operations to align priorities and ensure execution readiness.
• Ensure production plans are achievable and aligned with actual shop-floor capacity, constraints and operational readiness.
• Manage order execution and delivery performance, ensuring accurate planning and reliable customer commitment dates.
• Act as the key planning interface for issue resolution, priority setting, trade-off decisions and change-impact assessments.
• Proactively identify risks such as capacity constraints, material shortages, supplier delays and schedule disruptions, and drive timely mitigation plans.
• Strengthen planning processes, data quality and system utilization to improve forecast accuracy, schedule stability and supply reliability.
• Drive continuous improvement in planning effectiveness, inventory
• performance, production flow and customer service.
• Foster a culture of accountability, ownership, urgency, collaboration and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Operations Management, Business or a related discipline.
• 7+ years of experience in production or materials planning within a manufacturing or industrial environment. Experience in high-mix, high-volume contract manufacturing is strongly preferred.
• Proven people leadership experience, including coaching, performance management and team development. Firm, assertive and results-oriented with the confidence to drive accountability and make difficult trade-off decisions.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, complex and constantly changing environment with competing priorities.
• Demonstrated experience leading integrated planning activities across demand planning, supply planning, materials planning and production scheduling.
• Good understanding of manufacturing operations, capacity planning, material availability and production scheduling.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills, with the ability to act decisively under pressure.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence and challenge cross-functional teams when required.
• Good communication and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and drive execution.
• Knowledge of Oracle, Power BI and VBA is preferred.
• Passion for innovation, process improvement and operational excellence.