Demand Planning Manager at RCL Foods

Job description

"RCL FOODS is more than a company name: it's a vision, an ambition and a passion to bring more food to more people, more often!"

Purpose of the Role:

• To own, facilitate, and lead the sales forecasting and demand management process for Sugar & Milling division of RCL FOODS, in order to drive visibility of demand to the business and in particular to the supply chain; improve product prioritization and associated business decisions; and improve customer service.

Minimum Requirements::

• Relevant 3 year degree or Supply Chain Diploma
• 5 years prior experience in supply chain planning, of which at least 3 years must be within demand planning with good functional experience in depot / stock replenishment and forecasting
• Managerial or team leader experience of at least 2-3 years

Key Accountabilities:

Strategic Planning

• Define the degree of forward planning (3 - 6 months, 2 years etc.) and execute accordingly.
• Functional Strategy into Action Operationalization
• Work in conjunction with other Senior Managers in the Outbound Supply Chain team to co-create the outbound national strategy, based on a 1-2 year's view of requirements.
• Facilitate integrated supply chain delivery by managing relationships and interaction with cross functional national and regional teams.
• Suggest improvements to the annual functional "Strategy into Action" plan.
• Ensure the agreed SIA is implemented through team targets and that these targets align cross functionally within area of responsibility.
• Collaborate with the internal supply chain to deliver the product to the mills.
• Coordinate and drive the national outbound supply chain planning projects when applicable.

Demand Forecasting and Management

• Manage the demand forecasting process for Sugar & Milling by developing and implementing a forecasting process using appropriate models and tools that will provide a robust and visible forecast that is appropriate for each category of products.
• Manage the demand forecasting process by customer and product group, where appropriate for 0 – 12 months, rolling. The first three months will be done in weekly time buckets, with the remaining time horizon being months, split into weeks.
• Use understanding of product profitability, trading environment and customer knowledge to lead the demand management process, particularly for price sensitive categories with the customer team.
• Drive the delivery of a rough cut business forecast for months 13 – 24 to enable a longer term business forecast that will be used to drive decisions within the inbound supply chain
• Hold the sales team accountable for inputs into the demand planning process, using trends and KPI’s to drive the improvement of forward forecasts.
• Ensure that the forecasts presented have appropriate documented assumptions and that the base forecast has been challenged in advance of it being presented to the sales team.
• Ensure that the sales management team are able to interpret the final consolidated forward forecast by providing the information in an understandable format and enable them to challenge and/or signoff the business forecast.

Continuous Improvement

• Drive continuous improvement in both forecast bias and customer service excellence by making recommendations for change using facts and trends learnt through appropriate analysis of data.
• Use appropriate KPI's as well as understanding of pricing impact on product sales to drive the improvement of the forecast and minimize volatility.
• Work with the sales team, develop a better understanding of price elasticity, market trends and implement appropriate tools and ways of working into the demand planning process to factor these into account in the forecast and normal operating procedures.
• For those categories that are demand managed, lead the process of linking volume/forecast to price.
• Promotions Effectiveness
• Work closely with the sales team to complete promotional effectiveness analysis and provide input into pricing decisions where appropriate.
• Challenge the promotions grid where assumptions seem vague and/or off-take is out of line with past trends.
• Work with the customer team to determine promotional activities volume and track the effectiveness of the promotions (costs vs. promotional volume increment).
• Question the promotional volume based on the success/failure of past promotions.

Innovation

• Work with Marketing and Customer teams to develop the forecast for new products and to manage the discontinuation of products out of the business.
• Optimize the existing collaborative planning processes with key customers and propose opportunities to establish collaboration with new customers.
• Drive Rainbow’s discontinuation process to ensure effective stock sell through, minimize write offs, maintain master data integrity.
• Ensure that innovation and discontinuation business processes are followed to enable all systems to be timeously updated.
• Portfolio Management
• Complete the data analysis to provide input into discussions on portfolio management.
• Make recommendations on where opportunities exist to remove SKU's from the portfolio using agreed guidelines.
• Lead the discussion with business teams on portfolio management, customer and production classification and drive rationalization of the tail.
• Review the business portfolio at least annually.
• Sales and Operations Planning
• To assist in driving the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process throughout Sugar & Milling by reviewing of the customer demand and supply resources, in order to reconcile the GAP and achieve the S&OP “one number”.