Senior Manager, Demand Planning

Description

TITLE: Senior Manager, Demand Planning 

REPORTS TO: Director, Supply Chain Planning

LOCATION: Chicago, IL

Lactalis Heritage Dairy is currently seeking candidates to join our team in Chicago. 

Lactalis Group, the world leader in dairy, is a family-owned business with more than 85,000 pragmatic and ambitious professionals worldwide, committed to providing healthy and delicious dairy products that bring people together every day. At Lactalis, our core values of AMBITION, ENGAGEMENT, and SIMPLICITY are at the heart of everything we do.

If you’re looking for a unique experience with a company that offers strong brands, professional expertise, and a dynamic work environment that champions entrepreneurial spirit, hands-on responsibility, and real opportunity for career development, we want to hear from you!

Lactalis Heritage Dairy: inviting you to share with us your STORY, your PASSION, and your EXPERTISE.

From your PASSION to ours

The Senior Manager Demand Planning is accountable for leading the demand planning team and coordinating the overall demand management process.  The principle objective is to ensure a robust and disciplined monthly demand review cycle to deliver an accurate unbiased, unconstrained demand plan based on all relevant cross functional input, which will require strong collaboration with commercial and operational partners. This role is responsible for and leading and developing the Demand Planning organization, building world class people capabilities and appropriately recruiting the best team to meet the functional and organizational objectives.

From your EXPERTISE to ours

Key responsibilities for this position include:

• Lead a forecasting team responsible for the development of an unbiased and unconstrained forecast over a 24-month horizon with properly documented assumptions, including presenting the forecast and associated assumptions during the broader business S&OP process.
• Ensure workload is balanced and team members have appropriate brand / segment responsibility
• Coach and develop team capabilities in analysis, forecasting, planning, and influencing.
• Optimize ways of working and supporting tools/processes within the team, and with the broader business, to ensure that the efforts of the team keep up with the changing needs of the business.
• Partner with finance to support appropriate linkage between the monthly demand plan and financial forecasts (key assumptions, risks, opportunities).
• Partner with Commercial leadership to quantify & validate risks and opportunities, and support the development of plans to close gaps between the forecast and target.
• Partner with marketing to validate the size of innovations, renovations, and campaigns as they enter into the 24-month forecast horizon.
• Communicate and influence the business to close gaps between the unbiased forecast and target
• Present the forecast and associated assumptions to business leadership and key stakeholders
• Remain an unbiased voice in the face of business pressures
• Resolve disagreements over planning assumptions and drive for consensus
• Partner with Supply Planning to ensure that there is confidence in the demand plan, and that key forecast  decisions are being made with the appropriate amount of lead time to ensure successful execution and delivery of the plan.
• Drive continuous capability building within the Demand Planning team as a talent development program to promote individual professional and functional growth and development.
• Set and track performance targets for the team across key KPIs including Forecast Error, Bias, and Forecast Value Add

Requirements

From your STORY to ours

Qualified applicants will contribute the following:

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain, engineering, business, logistics, or related field. Master’s degree preferred
• Industry certifications preferred: APICS, IBF, CSCMP
• 5 years of supply chain experience with at least half that time in Demand Planning / Forecasting. 
• Experience leading teams (2 years)
• Proficiency in Excel and general knowledge of other MS Office applications
• SAP experience preferred 
• Knowledge of customer and consumer behavior and how these behaviors impact the demand plan
• Knowledge of the methodologies of statistical forecasting and how this forms the basis of a demand signal
• Knowledge of how to develop a driver based demand plan and the various inputs that are used
• Ability to demonstrate a drive for results within demand planning and understand how this links with the organizational goals.
• Proven ability to build effective relationships with all departments and employees in a collaborative team-oriented environment
• Demonstrated experience building strong teams and developing people