Planning Manager - Demand & Inventory - FMCG

The role primarily entails creation, modification and management of Statistical Forecast, Demand Plans & Inventory Plans. The Demand Planner's responsibilities include monitoring FG inventory levels, regularly providing Service status updates to management & Sales team and facilitating the timely delivery of products to customers. Besides this, he/she is also accountable for driving the S&OP process to understand the dynamic market changes, suggest changes to existing forecasts basis the over/under selling and align Production to meet the Demand Plans.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Delivering Service -

- Leading S&OP for the entire India business. Key participants of the monthly S&OP- CEO, CFO, COO, CMO and category heads.

- Supply chain Continuous Improvement projects in auto-replenishment, deployment planning, forecasting.

- Generating demand forecast that incorporates business intelligence and demand signals gathered from sales, marketing, finance, and other sources.

- Leveraging statistical tools to derive forecast based on historical data. Data visualization using Power BI and tableau.

- Leading weekly control tower meetings with the sales team on demand & supply.

- Continuous monitoring of SLOB and minimizing it through timely liquidation through sales interventions.

- Deployment planning & providing inputs to the production teams, and assisting them to develop inventory strategies on existing items & new products. Develop strong relationships with Internal and External stakeholders

- Work with Sales & Marketing teams and provide best in class service solutions

- Work closely with Supply Planning and Material Planning teams to understand the availability of various skus and look at improving Service to field teams.

- Jointly set objectives with stakeholders, undertake business reviews to reflect achievement against established KPIs, identify gaps and manage Continuous Improvement strategies.

Required Skills / Experience / Competencies:

- MBA from reputed institute.

- Minimum of 3+ years of Planning experience in FMCG or Consumer goods industry

- Past working experience in Planning function - Demand/Supply/Materials.

- Would be great to have also have Sales support experience

- Be able to understand, appreciate and question relevant Functional teams to be able to deliver stated objectives at the best prices.

- Resilient and able to work in an agile, fast moving environment and keep up with pace of change and priority according to business needs.