What are the responsibilities and job description for the Material Planner/Coordinator position at Eagle Foods, LLC?
Overview:
At Eagle Foods we are builders. We are builders of brands, categories, and people. Eagle Foods enjoys a rich heritage with brands that have proven category leadership for more than 150 years. Eagle is a diversified food company producing and marketing sweetened condensed and evaporated milk, snacks and convenient meal solutions products. As a company, Eagle Foods is passionate about fostering an entrepreneurial spirit that boldly builds better people and better brands while focusing on the positive impact our company, our products and our people have on the world. Eagle Foods has a bold family of brands that consumers have come to rely on for decades, including Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk and Evaporated Milk, Magnolia® Sweetened Condensed Milk, PET® Milk, Popcorn Indiana, Cretors Popcorn, Helper and Suddenly Salad. Eagle Foods products are marketed and distributed across all U.S. retail channels, including grocery stores, club stores and mass-merchandisers, as well as foodservice and export, U.S. military, and private label business.
Responsibilities:
Additional Information
Protective Equipment: When in the plant, employees must wear personal protective equipment, as required, which could include an assigned work uniform, hair and beard net, safety glasses, designated shoes, and ear protection.
Additional equipment may be required to follow all safety rules and procedures by working safely and ensuring the safety of others.
At Eagle Foods we are builders. We are builders of brands, categories, and people. Eagle Foods enjoys a rich heritage with brands that have proven category leadership for more than 150 years. Eagle is a diversified food company producing and marketing sweetened condensed and evaporated milk, snacks and convenient meal solutions products. As a company, Eagle Foods is passionate about fostering an entrepreneurial spirit that boldly builds better people and better brands while focusing on the positive impact our company, our products and our people have on the world. Eagle Foods has a bold family of brands that consumers have come to rely on for decades, including Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk and Evaporated Milk, Magnolia® Sweetened Condensed Milk, PET® Milk, Popcorn Indiana, Cretors Popcorn, Helper and Suddenly Salad. Eagle Foods products are marketed and distributed across all U.S. retail channels, including grocery stores, club stores and mass-merchandisers, as well as foodservice and export, U.S. military, and private label business.
Job Description Summary:
The Material Planner is responsible for ensuring that adequate quantities of the correct materials are on hand to support the production schedule and facility. This person will be accountable for developing supporting material plans and works closely with the Production Scheduler to identify supply problems related to schedule changes and monitors bill of materials as needed on new or existing items. Additionally, this individual monitors and controls inventory levels to optimize inventory and minimize obsolescence
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
- Work with your manager, corporate purchasing, and the plant warehouse manager to set safety stocks for materials considerate of supplier lead times, contract stipulations with suppliers (as an example, does the supplier hold inventory on our behalf so we can hold less at the plant), demand and production needs over the material lead time horizon and historical variability of demand for the items
- Order/release materials from assigned suppliers to maintain material safety stocks/inventory levels considerate of the weekly production schedule and mid -range production plan at the plant
- Proactively communicate with your manager, the plant scheduler/s, plant leadership and corporate purchasing when material inventories or scheduled deliveries are not sufficient to support scheduled or planned production. Work with these partners to develop solutions to support the business need.
- Interact with suppliers to communicate material needs and develop solutions to material supply issues
- Work with vendors to provide needed quantities of materials to adequately support production demands in the circumstances such as changed production schedules or rejected deliveries and manage the return of any defective or rejected ingredients back to the vendor and ensure proper credits are issued
- Meet with vendors to discuss issues, and to ensure continuous improvement in areas of products and processes
- Own the supply of materials until they arrive at the plant. This includes personally working with suppliers to monitor deliveries where we are at risk of not having materials in the plant in time to support planned production.
- Participate in cycle counting and inventory level verification in support of the plant team when requested or where the material inventory situation is best owned by planning. While inventory record accuracy (floor count to system) is primarily a plant responsibility there will be some instances or materials where the planner/coordinator will need to own or engage in the process.
- Own resolution with suppliers when physical deliveries or delivery paperwork (CoA, BOL, etc.) do not meet receiving expectations. This includes being available to field calls or engage on the dock to confirm issues exist, partnering with warehouse and plant leadership to align on what to do immediately with the receipt (reject, receive and hold, etc.), working the immediate issue to resolution with the supplier, and working with the supplier and purchasing (as needed for 2nd level support) to have the supplier address repeat failures to prevent recurrence.
- In coordination with purchasing and marketing, plan, communicate and manage material transitions so that they are done with no plant production interruption and minimal to no obsolescence.
- Consider impact of scheduling decisions on shared resources throughout the plant (i.e., labor, equipment, etc.) and work with other personnel to resolve conflicts and improve productivity
-
Attend daily and weekly plant scheduling meetings to:
- Review the production plans and understand plan changes
- Communicate material inventory or delivery timing concerns and develop a plan to mitigate the risk
- Review any planned material transitions so the operation understands what is changing and how to manage
- Identify follows ups to be owned by you related to the above
- Learn about M3 planning and scheduling parameters and processes and use them to build and optimize the plan on your assigned materials. Over time, more of our planning and scheduling should be done in M3 and not Excel.
Core Skills and Knowledge:
- Strong communication skills, verbal and written including ‘seeking to understand, then to be understood’
- Collaboration skills and an ability to work with others to create win-win outcomes
- Experience doing production planning in an ERP system
- Knowledge of plant operations and production scheduling
- MS Office skills inclusive of an ability to use Outlook, Word, and Excel
- Demonstrated ability to learn new skills and new ways of working, and apply them in a professional environment
- Initiative and follow through, self-starter. Ability to work independently and meet goals/objectives
- Ability to identify, effectively resolve (most of the time) and escalate (some of the time, when needed) issues that will negatively impact the business
- Continuous improvement mindset including being willing to challenge the status quo when business needs are not being met
Minimum Requirements Preferred:
- 3-5 years work experience in supply chain/logistics
- Knowledge of plant operations and production scheduling
- Bachelor’s Degree from accredited University or equivalent experience
- ERP / MRP experience
- Proficient in excel
- Display strong technical, interpersonal and analytical skills
Additional Information
Work Environment: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing tasks and responsibilities of the job.
The employee works in causal laboratory environment. The employee is expected to walk within the plant which requires personal protective equipment to be worn. The noise level in the work environment is usually loud.
Protective Equipment: When in the plant, employees must wear personal protective equipment, as required, which could include an assigned work uniform, hair and beard net, safety glasses, designated shoes, and ear protection.
Additional equipment may be required to follow all safety rules and procedures by working safely and ensuring the safety of others.
