Production Planning Manager

 Position Summary

The Production Planning Manager is responsible for overseeing the scheduling of production operations across multiple plants and production lines. This role focuses on optimizing production workflows, ensuring on-time delivery, maximizing resource utilization, and maintaining efficient inventory management. The manager works closely with cross-functional teams, including operations, purchasing, quality, finance and sales to ensure that production plans align with demand forecasts and business objectives.

 Responsibilities

• Lead a team of 4 production planners in the development and execution of production schedules for multiple manufacturing plants with diverse operations (assembly, extrusion, plastic injection molding, stamping, and packaging lines).
• Lead daily scheduling activities providing direction, support, and accountability to team members ensuring production schedules meet customer expectations and company targets.
• Formulate the master production plan that best achieves demand forecast, inventory and financial objectives, and customer requirements. 
• Oversee the allocation of production resources, including labor, machine, and materials, to maximize production efficiency. Ensure that production capabilities meet forecasted demand while avoiding over- or under-utilization of resources.
• Collaborate with operations, purchasing, and fulfillment/logistics teams to ensure that production schedules are aligned with production capacity, raw material availability and shipping timelines; including communication of production schedules, changes, and updates to all relevant stakeholders.
• Assess monthly S&OP demand plan (including new product development, new customers, and special projects/large quantity demand), revise master schedule as required to align available capacity with customer expectations, and communicate changes to internal stakeholders.
• Lead monthly S&OP Supply Review process for sign-off of short- and long-term supply plans with senior management team.
• Track and analyze production performance against scheduled timelines, identifying any variances, delays, or bottlenecks. Proactively implement corrective actions to address any issues impacting production efficiency, such as equipment downtime, resource shortages, or supply chain disruptions to avoid impact on customer orders
• Analyze scheduling and production data to identify short- and long-term trends, potential issues, and areas for improvement to report on key organization metrics like on-time delivery, capacity utilization, and inventory levels.
• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in the scheduling process to enhance efficiency, reduce lead times, and minimize production costs.
• Support decision making process for manufacturing related Capital Expenditure projects. 

Required Qualifications and Skills 

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Operations Management, Business Administration, or related discipline required
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in production scheduling, demand/supply planning, or comparable supply chain experience with an additional 2 years in a supply chain, production planning and scheduling related leadership role
• Experience scheduling production within complex / multi-plant operations preferred 

Competencies  

• Working knowledge of production and distribution practices in an ERP system required; experience with SAP preferred
• High level of proficiency in Microsoft Excel for data analysis and reporting
• Strong ability to analyze production data, identify trends, and optimize scheduling processes
• Ability to resolve production scheduling conflicts and address challenges in a fast-paced environment
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills to collaborate effectively with various departments and stakeholders on all hierarchy levels
• Strong attention to detail to ensure that production schedules are accurate and aligned with business objectives

Working Conditions

• This position will be in a manufacturing environment based in Cullman, AL

Physical Demands

Job requires both sitting and standing.   Excellent vision, hearing, speech and motor skills are required to perform essential functions of the job.