Manager, Production Planning

Overview

Waters Corporation is currently seeking a highly motivated and team-oriented candidate to lead our Production Planning team in Milford, MA. This position will lead two functions including production planning supporting highly labor-intensive production areas in Assembly Ops such as: NPI, Assembly, VICAM, and Kitting. Production planning/scheduling in our Machining Ops with multiple semi or fully automated departments. This position will oversee the professional staff of 5 Production Planners.

The owner of this position interfaces with Demand Planning, Supply Planning, Procurement and Production to create build plans to achieve all services metrics, ultimately to have product available per customer expectation. The team also schedules jobs in our Machining Operations to satisfy requirements to internal customers including global Waters’ sites and our Contract Manufactures to ensure global operations supply.

The successful candidate will be a In-dept planning knowhow leader with root cause analysis experience. A passionate, agile & transformational leader, who strives to deliver superior value to our internal and external customers every day. They will have the ability to improve the effectiveness of the current processes and systems leading to improve the production plan and supply attainment performance. This hands-on position requires dynamic-proactive leadership, excellent interpersonal skills, problem solving, critical thinking as well as a compelling initiative to drive the organization succeed.

Responsibilities

• Implement and maintain comprehensive safety protocols for all employees, ensuring high self-awareness and achieving a progressive reduction in injury rates until zero incidents.
• Oversee the site team responsible for Production Planning and Scheduling, ensuring compliance with customer delivery requirements by conducting root cause analysis and developing corrective actions for continuous improvement.
• Develop and enforce robust processes and procedures for executing the master production schedule (MPS) and material requirements planning (MRP) utilizing SAP APO (Advanced Planner and Optimizer), mitigating roadblocks during site planning meetings.
• Engage actively in the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, analyzing demand inputs to create and manage production plans, capacity requirements, and clear-to-build plans, while providing real-time status updates.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to optimize raw material flow, working closely with procurement to expedite and reschedule shipments, thus avoiding production disruptions and maintaining optimal inventory levels.
• Create and manage a comprehensive rough-cut capacity model, balancing plant utilization, cost efficiency, and inventory levels, with an emphasis on optimizing production sequences and achieving consensus between production, planning, and engineering teams.
• Monitor and manage supply planning processes related to contract manufacturers, including demand-supply coordination, CMS forecast management, and expediting requirements, ensuring alignment between the system and actual production needs.

Qualifications

• BA/BS in Supply Chain related field required. MBA will be a plus.
• Minimum 10 years related experience in production planning and inventory management in a manufacturing environment.
• 5 years of people leadership experience managing a team of direct reports.
• Advanced proficiency with SAP APO and Microsoft applications required.
• APICS CPIM certification or equivalent highly desired.
• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, verbal, written and presentation skills.
• Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and drive corrective actions.
• Strong leadership skills, self-directed and the ability to make independent decisions.
• Experience with New Product Introduction (NPI) processes.
• Familiarity with cGMP, ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 is desired.

Company Description

Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT), the world's leading specialty measurement company, has pioneered chromatography, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis innovations serving the life, materials, and food sciences for over 60 years. With approximately 8,000 employees worldwide, Waters operates directly in 35 countries, including 15 manufacturing facilities, with products available in more than 100 countries. Our team focuses on creating business advantages for laboratory-dependent organizations to enable significant advancement in healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality.   

Working at Waters enables our employees to unlock the potential of their careers. Our global team is driven by purpose. We strive to be better, learn and improve every day in everything we do. We’re the problem solvers and innovators that aren’t afraid to take risks to transform the world of human health and well-being. We’re all in it together delivering benefit as one to provide the insights needed today in order to solve the challenges of tomorrow. 

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our core values at Waters Corporation. It is our responsibility to actively implement programs and practices to drive inclusive behavior and increase diversity across the organization. We are united by diversity and thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, our customers and our community. Waters is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or protected Veteran status.