Sr. Demand Planner

Company Overview

Why Choose Us?

Novolex is a leading manufacturer of food, beverage, and specialty packaging that supports multiple industries including foodservice, restaurant delivery and carryout, food processing, grocery and retail, and industrial sectors. Novolex manufacturing and sourcing expertise spans a diverse range of substrates including resin, paper, molded fiber, aluminum and more. We provide customers a broad array of stock and customized solutions with 120 product categories, 250 brands and over 39,000 SKUs.

Our Sustainability Commitment

The Novolex sustainability vision is built upon three pillars: our products, our operations and our people. Each is critically important to our growth and future as a business. These pillars form the foundation of our company-wide commitment to sustainability, helping us achieve our ambitious goals through our wide-ranging initiatives.

Job Description

Job Summary

The Senior Demand Planner is responsible for generating and owning Demand Plan for their assigned scope (sales organization and or products).  The expectation is that the Senior Demand Planner develops a monthly plan in partnership with their business stakeholders that provides an 18-month outlook for the needs of their customer base.  In addition, as a Senior Planner this role has responsibility for coordinating efforts across the Demand Planning team, including monthly reports, budget development, and process improvement projects.

This highly impactful and visible role will communicate and present with stakeholders and leaders across the organization.  This role will ensure that the demand signal being used across the organization is aligned with sales and capacity to be used for making decisions in financial planning, manufacturing asset planning, staffing, procurement of raw materials, and final customer fulfillment.  This person will be a key owner in the monthly SIOP process.

Location

• Lake Forest, IL/Home Based Hybrid (3 days a week/2 days a week)

Essential Functions and Key Responsibilities

• Own the Monthly Demand Planning process in the Monthly SIOP cycle using Kinaxis Rapid Response and/or Blue Yonder.
  • Maintain DFU level forecasts
  • Utilize statistical methods, such as Lewandowski model, in reviewing and analyzing data to drive improved accuracy.
  • Partner with the sales and product/business teams to create the 18-month unconstrained demand plan for the assigned scope
  • Perform data maintenance and clean-up in the planning system
  • Implement forecast product transitions and successions.
• Analyze current plan and assess gaps and opportunities considering:
  • Statistical trending
  • Meet with sales team monthly to learn of significant changes to current forecasts
  • Information from the customer service team
  • Meetings with customers
  • Economic indicators
• During the monthly Demand Consensus process, summarize the changes to the current 18-month Demand Plan and make recommendations of changes to the owner of the assigned scope
  • Communicate changes to demand and supply (increases/decreases) to affected stakeholders in SIOP, Procurement and Manufacturing.
• On an annual basis, work with the Sales, Business and Finance teams to generate the Demand Plan for the AOP/budget process
• As part of the monthly Demand Planning cycle run reports that help coordinate team efforts for:
  • Calculating forecast accuracy
  • Coordinating data cleansing needs
  • Identifying drivers or forecast error and actions that need to be taken
• Drive continuous improvements to the SIOP Planning process

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

• Primary KPI’s
  • DFU level forecast accuracy
    • Statistical forecast
    • Operational forecast
• Secondary/Shared KPI’s
  • On Time In Full (OTIF)

Requirements

• BA/BS degree in business, mathematics or engineering; Master’s degree preferred
• APICS or IBF certification preferred
• Experience with Advanced Planning Software tools; experience with Blue Yonder and/or Kinaxis preferred
• ERP experience required, SAP experience preferred
  • MRP experience and understanding required
• Analytical capability
  • Proven ability to translate data into information, recommendations and conclusions; work with large diverse data sets and perform modeling , statistical analysis and data visualization
  • Advanced in Statistical Forecasting (demonstrated by understanding of how and when to use different statistical models; understanding of parameters t