Inventory Planning Manager

Function:

The Inventory Planning Manager will be responsible for providing leadership and deploying processes to perform the key forecasting activities within the distribution business. You will be a key member of the Supply Chain team making cross-functional decisions including short and long-term stocking strategy, systems implementation, and inventory optimization in a rapidly growing company.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

As a key inventory planning resource for the company you will provide the day-to-day and strategic planning to optimize inventory levels driving buying team activity, warehouse operations, and supporting sales. The successful candidate will provide both leadership and direct execution of the following activities:

• Building strategies to improve ABC stratification, reorder points updates, forecast accuracy, and inventory optimization
• Development and execution of the stocking strategies for each warehouse.
• Review of customer specific requisitions for new items to ensure compliance with company policies
• Kitting Bill-of-Material maintenance and work order management by warehouse.
• Establishing effective relationships with the Warehouse Managers and Regional Sales Managers and work closely with them to address any materials questions or stocking plans.
• Strategic approach to Implementation of the Advance Supply Chain module in Oracle
• Manage inventory planning processes and lead functional analysis for all warehouse locations, improving forecast models and their application to the company business.
• Process improvement for managing inventory turns, forecast alerts, and disposition of excess and obsolete inventory
• Maintain oversight during physical inventories and inventory discrepancy reconciliations
• Other duties as assigned

This role is based out of our corporate headquarters; however, the Inventory Planning Manager will travel to the regions as necessary to support warehouse projects, business integration, physical inventories, and other initiatives as business opportunities develop.

Successful Candidates will possess the following qualifications and skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Engineering or other technical discipline that is relevant to assigned responsibilities.
• Experience leading, managing, and coaching teams through processes transformation.
• 7+ years of experience in an Inventory Planning role within in a distribution environment.
• Experience working in Oracle Advance Supply Chain or third-party demand planning tools is a plus.
• Demonstrated proficiency in statistics, forecasting, and forecasting methods with an understanding of their financial and operational impact.

Ability to:

• Provide subject matter expertise and provide analytical support for the inventory planning processes and prioritization of projects assigned to the Inventory Team.
• Work well with a diverse group of people at all levels of organizations including Supply Chain, Operations, and Sales.
• Ability and willingness to work along-side co-workers to understand customer needs and drive improvements which create value for the company.
• Develop and execute re-usable ‘mass data’ download queries and reports from Oracle to feed the analysis, forecasting, and business reporting processes.
• Write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals.
• Effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, customers and the general public.
• Travel domestically up 15%

Additional Skills:

• Experience in project management
• Ability to work collaboratively in a cross functional team environment.
• Ability to operate independently and self-directed.
• Strong work ethic, “can-do” attitude and team player.
• Ability to embrace and adapt to change.
• Proficient in manipulating large data files in Microsoft Excel for reporting.
• Ability to write SQL, VB or other related programming language to enable repeatable analysis.
• Strong listening, influencing and team building skills.
• Display a professional image at all times and in all situations.

This position will report to the Director of Supply Chain