Position Title:  Production Planner

Summary:

The Production Planner coordinates the flow of work and materials within or between departments according to daily, weekly production schedules. The Production Planner is responsible for tactical production scheduling to meet customer requirements while minimizing manufacturing and distribution costs, as well as the company inventory investment. This role is responsible for reviewing and distributing production schedules, maintaining Planning master data attributes in our planning systems, monitoring capacity utilizations, providing shipment schedule needs to Operations, conferring with department supervisors to determine progress of work and completion dates, managing inventory levels and working with operations to resolve production problems related to planning.

Essential Functions:

• Schedule utilizing MRP demand to execute planned work orders. Utilize released and created work orders to ensure compliance with planned demand to support sales and inventory levels, while effectively utilizing available capacity.
• Create and maintain schedules and lead times for each operation to successfully meet shipping dates according to forecasts and orders.
• Analyze and create operating schedules that support maximizing machine and labor efficiency.
• Prepare scheduling/planning reports as required.
• Modify scheduling demands to meet changes such as back orders or un-forecasted customer demand.
• Effectively communicate daily or as needed with internal customers (i.e., Operations, Quality, Procurement, Customer Service, etc.) as to status of all open orders/jobs.
• Host weekly Control Tower meetings and feed our IBP/S&OP process.
• Make or recommend revision to planned production schedules as necessary when schedules cannot be met, including preparing back-up schedules.
• Comply with our RFS Inventory Management policy to maintain inventory levels.
• Manage internal and external customers expedited request orders.
• Support efforts to minimize premium freight instances.
• Drive continuous improvement efforts to our planning processes.
• Comply with our Material Review Process to address slow moving (aged) inventory and prevent material Excess & Obsolesce instances.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Logistics, Supply Chain, Operations Management, Business or related field. May consider equivalent work experience in lieu of degree.
• 3+ years of relevant planning and/or logistics experience.
• Experience using production planning software and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and participate in teams to accomplish business objectives.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively work cross-functionally.
• Excellent MRP, scheduling, capacity management and organizational skills. 
• Excellent analytical and decision-making skills.
• SAP (ECC R3 and/or S4HANA) & IBP based Planning knowledge preferred.
• APICS certification (CPIM or CSCP) preferred.