Planning Manager

By joining Bio-Techne, you’ll join a company with a powerful and positive purpose of enabling cutting-edge research in Life Sciences and Clinical Diagnostics. Bio-Techne, and all of its brands, provides tools for researchers to further treat and prevent disease worldwide.

Pay Range:

POSITION SUMMARY

What makes this role exciting

Planning is the control tower of our supply chain: connecting demand, supply, manufacturing, quality, and customer commitments to keep the business running and customers supported.

This role is ideal for a seasoned planning leader who thrives in change environments: someone who can engage and motivate a team, enable performance and raise capability. You will lead the planning team through a transformation toward stronger execution discipline, data-driven decision making, and consistent cross-functional partnership.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

What you will do

Change leadership

• Lead the evolution of the planning organization by establishing an operating model aligned to business growth and customer needs.
• Reset expectations and standard work across planning to improve predictability, accountability, and execution.
• Drive adoption of best practices across forecasting, MRP execution, and inventory.
• Identify systemic gaps and translate them into practical, measurable improvement plans with clear owners and timelines.

Engage & motivate the team

• Build a high-performing team culture grounded in ownership, transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Coach and develop planners through structured 1:1s, clear performance expectations, and individualized growth plans.
• Strengthen team capability by setting standards for planning excellence and accountability.
• Provide timely, direct feedback and recognize great work.

Drive Execution Discipline

• Establish and run a planning operating rhythm (weekly/monthly cadence) that drives action, decision-making, and follow-through across the team.
• Monitor and improve key planning performance indicators.
• Lead the team through high-pressure execution windows (EOQ, constrained supply) with structured prioritization and disciplined closure.

Establish & maintain cross-functional partnerships

• Partner closely with Manufacturing, QC, Customer Service, Commercial, Procurement, and Finance to align priorities and manage constraints.
• Build strong working relationships across teams and ensure commitments are realistic and achievable.
• Lead cross-functional alignment on demand prioritization, capacity constraints, and customer commitments; ensuring clarity of trade-offs and decision rights.

Bring advanced planning and inventory optimization expertise

• Provide functional leadership in forecasting, scheduling, MRP execution, and replenishment strategy; ensuring decisions reflect operational constraints, risk, and customer need.
• Partner with IT and stakeholders to optimize ERP planning functionality, improve data quality and increase system-driven planning maturity.
• Ensure planning processes are scalable and resilient as the business grows.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• BS degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 7–10+ years of progressive production planning or demand management experience in a manufacturing environment (regulated / life sciences preferred).
• Previous supervisory experience is essential, including coaching, management, and change leadership.
• Strong understanding of MRP/ERP planning principles and experience leading teams in system-driven execution.
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders and lead through complexity and competing priorities.
• Strong analytical capability; comfortable using data to drive decisions and accountability.

Preferred

• MS in Supply Chain
• Experience with Microsoft Dynamics AX (or similar ERP).
• Lean / Six Sigma exposure (or strong continuous improvement toolkit).
• APICS / ASCM certification (CPIM/CSCP) or equivalent.