Supply and Inventory Planner

As the largest pureplay adhesives company in the world, H.B. Fuller’s (NYSE: FUL) innovative, functional coatings, adhesives and sealants enhance the quality, safety and performance of products people use every day. Founded in 1887, with 2024 revenue of $3.6 billion, our mission to Connect What Matters is brought to life by more than 7,500 global team members who collaborate with customers across more than 30 market segments in over 140 countries to develop highly specified solutions that enable customers to bring world-changing innovations to their end markets. Learn more at www.hbfuller.com.

Position Title: Supply and Inventory Planner

Location: Remote – USA or Hybrid – Based in Minnesota

Position Overview 

The primary responsibility is to proactively manage inventory to ensure each plant is supplied with optimal inventory levels and raw materials at all HB Fuller sites. This is achieved through effective management of business processes with discipline, speed, execution and accountability to continually improve the raw material requirements and finished good inventory planning process. Planners will be responsible for a specific group of materials and/or packaging across multiple NA Plants and warehouses. This may change over time depending on changes in the business environment. 

Primary Responsibilities  

Short to Long-Term Planning- 50% 

• Assist with development of raw material requirements plan across plants to minimize E&O inventory 

• Present basic forecasting of 12-18 month rolling raw material/packaging forecasts (data driven) with intelligent insights on future trends. 

• Review master production schedules and sales forecasts to determine raw material requirements and ensure availability 

• Develop medium and long-term capacity planning to ensure plants are able to meet planned demand and meet key inventory and service level KPIs 

• Review output of manufacturing assets in line with plant capabilities and demand requirements 

• Identify issues and work appropriate stakeholders on alignment. 

• Ensure all planning parameters within SAP are reviewed and updated regularly to align with our inventory and service level goals 

• Assist with creation of monthly SIOP plan by plant/asset outlining forecast demand/supply balance and anticipated inventory while reviewing previous months’ performance 

• Participate in monthly reviews of the SIOP plan with each plant providing feedback on expected volumes and capacity loading 

• Identify and communicate real or potential capacity and material supply chain issues; collaborate with plant leadership to determine corrective actions and coordinate across functions and follow up to resolution 

• Review/monitors execution to plan and assure available inventory is located appropriately and take necessary actions where actual performance deviates from the plan 

• Attends meetings with the SIOP Manager to support preparation of the Executive SIOP review. 

Inventory- 40% 

• Responsible for monitoring Inventory (Finished Goods, Raw Materials, Packaging, and WIP). Establish and maintain safety stock and inventory balances appropriate to meet production requirements, whilst optimizing use of working capital. 

• Regular review of ‘Make-to-Stock’ Inventory Levels to ensure inventory is at the target level to support target service level 

• Review excess, obsolete and slow-moving inventories in coordination with manufacturing sites and commercial teams to minimize potential impact to NAA of excess working capital or inventory write-offs. 

• Provide regular updates to Sourcing team on changing demand for raw materials 

• Detailed planning activities pertaining to raw material and finished goods 

Communication and Decision Making- 5% 

• Identify any materials management issues causing deviations from inventory and service level targets 

• Maintains and communicates a valid time-phased weekly master schedule 

• Collaboration with various partners in Supply Chain network to ensure timely communication of demand changes, translating the changes to its impact on the supply plan 

• Attends in daily/weekly/monthly meetings with all stakeholders 

Continuous Improvement- 5% 

• Focused development on continuous improvement in supply planning process and policy 

• Team member of ad-hoc projects in cooperation with Operations and Commercial – these can include product transfers within or between plants, raw material substitutions, or new product introduction 

• Track key KPIs related to supply chain planning and assists with preparation of reports on outputs 

Minimum Requirements