Demand Planner at Nutreco

The Demand and Supply Planner will be responsible for making tactical decisions to best balance supply and demand and if necessary, present decisions to the IBP Executive team for final approval. To be successful, they will need to work in a cross-functional team across Procurement, Formulation, Pricing, Finance, Sales and Production.

Job Description:

Demand Planning

• Creates the demand plans based on baseline (statistical) forecast which is enriched by inputs from the commercial teams; for the operational (0-13 weeks) and tactical horizon (4-15 months)
• Understands how to use statistical forecasting to create a solid baseline forecast and maintains, reviews and cleans historical data and determines if this can be applied to the portfolio.
• Understand the impact of business dynamics and translate them into the demand plan: NPD, phase-in/out, promotions, events, seasonality, tenders, contracts, and activations.
• If requested, provide different demand scenarios to the supply chain.
• Secure demand plan constraining in case of supply restrictions and share the results with internal stakeholders (e.g., supply, sales and customer service)
• Prepares the account & demand review meeting and provides input for the MT IBP meeting with the commercial teams.
• Follow-up on the decisions/constraints from the IBP cycle of the organisation and/or supply points
• First point of contact for the commercial organisation for the operational and/or tactical planning horizon

Supply Planning

• Preparing an accurate Supply Plan for specific product group(s) based on 1-15 months' time horizon which aims to meet the associated demand plan in the most effective manner, considering all relevant aspects of supply (capacity, raw material availability, formulation optimisation etc.)
• Quarterly or semi-annually creating a strategic (36 months) Supply Plan to identify potential supply constraints on the strategic horizon
• Prepare Supply Plan scenarios to determine the best option to maintain supply considering total Supply Chain cost and Customer Service
• Establish strict deadlines with the key contributors to the Supply Plan to ensure that information is available in time for the Supply Review
• Preparing the content for the monthly Supply Review, including where necessary, scenarios which aim to eliminate or at least minimise the gap between Supply and Demand. Where Supply is greater than demand, this should be highlighted for the Executive IBP meeting
• Manages the long term capacity planning of raw material supply based on analysis of sales and raw material forecasting in cooperation with the Commercial, Purchasing and Operations management, in order to support long term business planning.
• Monitor progress against the plan through frequent contact with Production & Material Planning and the Supply Points / Plant teams, consulting / informing of any adjustments as necessary, according to priorities, constraints & customer commitments. Maintain close contact with other Supply Network Planners and/or Customer Services advising them of the situation and the actions taken / in progress to deliver OTIF / available inventory
• Follow-up of the decisions/constraints from the IBP cycle of the organisation and/or supply points
• First point of contact for the commercial organisation for the tactical and strategic planning horizon

Inventory & Working Capital Management 

• Define and implement inventory and replenishment targets and apply inventory segmentation effectively 
• Manages inventory levels according to the inventory management guidelines, replenish relevant warehouses (in line with targets), follow up on aging and unallocated stock, obsolete & waste and acquire agreement with Demand, Planning Operations and Logistics throughout the network

Monitoring planning (PDCA-cycle) & Analysis

• Maintain demand planning master data and systems and software, maintains relevant data and monitors / analyses trends to further enhance the forecast.
• Drive continuous improvement of the forecast accuracy and bias in alignment with the commercial teams.
• Monitor, analyse, understand, and challenge the quality of the enrichments provided by the commercial teams (assumptions, deltas, consumption, trends, issues, gaps, risks, opportunities)
• Identify sales opportunities and risks and propose push sales on available capacities and RM.
• Coordinate any activities related to the constraining and allocation process for the organisation and/or supply points and ensure the match of demand & supply.
• Prepares and monitors the KPIs forecast accuracy, bias, and error to help identify improvement areas and monitor performance.
• Keeps up to date with the latest forecasting theory and concepts to become as effective as possible, including the use of aggregated forecasting techniques and statistical methods.
• Coordinate with Supply and Commercial teams (bridging commercial and Supply Chain) to determine priorities, corrective, and preventive actions to prevent OOS and Waste in accordance with the internal procedures.
• Continuously look for opportunities & improvements within daily work context and take ownership in implementing solutions.

Collaborative planning

• Prepares relevant material to facilitate discussion and facilitates / manages the monthly demand meeting, in which the input from Sales & Marketing is discussed beforehand.
• Achieves consensus for operational demand forecasts by facilitating a collaborative planning process with Sales & Marketing.
• Collaborate with key customers planning teams to tend to collaborative and integrated plans.

Continuous improvement

• Proposes improvements to the forecasting process and put it into practice

Projects

• Participates in various projects with the aim of improving the forecast reliability and/or the forecasting process