About this role
Summary
The Senior Production Planner owns an integrated, feasible production plan aligning demand with equipment, tooling, labor, and material. The role builds forward-looking scheduling, capacity planning, and Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) disciplines to improve delivery and margin. Scope includes roll forming and rolling, progressive die stamping, data center fabrication cells, and outside processing.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Scheduling and Capacity Planning
- Build and release finite schedules over 0–4 weeks, respecting tooling, changeovers, crew coverage including 24/7 lines, material availability, and outside processing lead times.
- Balance delivery commitments, changeover cost, and line efficiency; define the release window for supervisors daily sequencing. Maintain work-center rules, run standards, changeover times, and crew requirements.
- Maintain 1–6 month rough-cut capacity plans for constraint equipment and labor; identify overloads and underloads and support shift, overtime, outsourcing, and equipment timing decisions.
- Model demand shifts, customer push-outs, downtime, late material, and program ramps; recommend scenarios with quantified service, cost, and inventory trade-offs.
Material Planning and S&OP
- Own time-phased coil, strip, and purchased-component requirements by grade, gauge, and width. Purchasing places and expedites orders; flag risks where commitments precede firm customer demand.
- Run the monthly S&OP cycle: collect Sales demand, prepare supply and capacity views, frame decisions, facilitate meetings, and close actions. Maintain the agreed master production schedule.
Order Changes and Plan Execution
- Propose and administer time fences and order-change rules. Assess pull-ins and push-outs against capacity, material, and other customers; quantify raw material, WIP, and finished-goods exposure for commercial discussions.
- Publish plans to Production, Maintenance, Quality, Purchasing, and Sales. Provide daily huddle input, lead weekly schedule reviews, investigate misses, and drive corrective actions.
- Escalate risks promptly with options. Maintain accurate ERP planning data, including routings, run rates, and lead times, with responsible functions; improve scheduling tools and reporting.
Decision Rights and Escalation
- Decide schedule release and load balancing within agreed capacity. Accept pull-ins or push-outs outside the frozen zone within policy when other customers are unaffected; inform Sales.
- Obtain Operations leader approval for frozen-zone changes. Refer customer priority conflicts to S&OP or Operations leadership; recommend overtime, shifts, and outsourcing.
- Define material requirements; Purchasing executes purchases. Supervisors retain daily sequencing within the agreed release window.
Escalate the same day when a committed order is at risk inside the frozen zone, constraint load exceeds [90% – confirm] of demonstrated capacity in the next four weeks, a material shortfall falls inside supplier lead time, or customer push-out exposure exceeds [$ threshold – confirm].
Performance Measures
Weekly: on-time, in-full delivery to promise date; schedule adherence; frozen-zone changes; constraint load versus demonstrated capacity; material availability at job release.
Monthly: customer push-out exposure in raw material, work in process (WIP), and finished goods; on-time S&OP completion and action closure.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- Minimum seven years in discrete manufacturing planning, master scheduling, or production control; ownership of multi-work-center schedules and shared-constraint capacity plans.
- Experience leading an S&OP process or a significant part of it; strong ERP/MRP skills and advanced Excel, including scenario modeling.
- Clear writing and presentation skills; ability to present quantified options and trade-offs to senior leadership and align cross-functional teams.
- Bachelors degree in supply chain, industrial engineering, operations, or business, or equivalent relevant experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- ASCM/APICS CPIM certification, or willingness to earn it within 18 months; coil-fed metals experience, including roll forming, stamping, and steel or copper planning.
- Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) tools, Power BI, SQL, new program launches, Lean methods, and Theory of Constraints.
Core Competencies
Systems thinking, analytical judgment, composure under disruption, influence without authority, proactive communication, and discipline in maintaining planning commitments.
Working Conditions
On-site office and production-floor work; PPE required on the floor. Occasional off-hours contact supports lines running 24/7.