Logistics Planner at CHEP

Position Purpose

• The Logistics Planner role takes ownership for planning and fulfillment of customer demand, and for transport revenue and costs. This role acts as the liaison between Planning & Logistics, Operations and the Commercial Sales teams to ensure supply and demand needs are met; and will be responsible for developing the short to medium-term hire equipment demand and supply plan, ensuring sufficient hire equipment availability at the right time and right location to meet customer demand. Through stringent analytical processes, the Logistics Planner will control, drive and implement procedures to ensure that the Service Centre network is optimally balanced and CHEP hire equipment are adequately planned to positively impact overall Customer Experience (CX) through striving toward achieving 100% DIFOT and 100% CIFOT at the lowest cost to serve.

Key Accountabilities
Equipment Flows (Demand Planning):

• Own the Customer Forecasting process, working with the Commercial Sales teams to obtain and validate customer forecasts through monitoring and utilizing historical demand data as well as market intelligence to ensure a high level of short to medium-term issue and return forecast accuracy by customer and Service Centre
• Develop and maintain an in-depth understanding of dynamics and influencing factors specific to CHEP products at a customer, Service Centre, geographical area and regional levels, including seasonal fluctuations and reasons / causes of fluctuations.
• Strive toward achieving 100% Demand Planning forecast accuracy in Blue Yonder through ensuring that customer master data in Blue Yonder is maintained and through suggesting changes to forecasting algorithms to improve customer level demand forecasts.
• Conduct detailed analysis of network flows to identify, setup and maintain Inventory Management and Order fulfillment & distribution in Blue Yonder, including identifying all rules and constraints affecting the supply of Hire Equipment at customer and Service Centre level, ensuring that relocation flows suggested by Blue Yonder are optimised for efficiency and cost.
• Conduct network balancing studies to identify and provide recommendations on changes to activities at Service Centres (inspection and conditioning) and to customer flow patterns to improve customer service and reduce cost to serve.

Production Planning (Supply Planning):

• Calculate national production plans by Service Centre and material based on customer forecast, hire equipment flows as well as Service Centre conditioning capacities.
• Daily monitoring of Service Centre output vs. target and inventory cover to ensure sufficient hire equipment availability to meet demand
• Discuss any shortfall on target production and stock cover with Operations leaders and make alternative plans to ensure availability of stock to meet customer demand.
• Liaise with Hire Equipment Planning team to ensure supply capacity is effectively planned and monitored to support new purchases and demand capacity in line with desired Field Stock Ratios.

Inventory Control:

• Responsible for maintaining optimal inventory levels at the various Service Centres as well as communicating the inventory levels and stock transfer plans to internal customers.
• Ensure that the Service Centres remain within safe storage capacities
• Develop and maintain an in-depth understanding of service centre capabilities and constraints relating to specific products:
• Availability of yard space to store
• Forklift availability
• Load handling capability and time constraints (hours of operation and loading bays)
• Production capacity
• Understanding of the new product procurement plan including quantity on order and lead times to determine how these can be optimally deployed.
• Define stock transfer / collection & delivery plan requirements (i.e. product code and status, quantity, source, destination, timing) based on equipment flows, whilst taking into consideration service centre and transport constraints

Order Planning and Fulfillment

• Correctly place customer orders, ensuring that the orders are planned on the lowest cost lanes
• Ensure accurate change codes are applied when making changes to customer orders
• Maximise truck utilisation, and work with Planners across other categories where required to build a full load
• Liaise with Operations or Sales team to ensure that trucks are turned in the quickest possible time at Service Centres and Customer sites, minimising standing time charges
• Reduce the number of failed collections and deliveries

Financial Control:

• Relentless focus on identifying and implementing initiatives to drive efficiencies in Logistics and reduce transport spend.
• Responsible for setting and communicating customer collection and delivery charges
• Review actual relocation flows and network imbalances against relocation charges to identify and realign relocation charges where there is under and over recovery.
• Ensure that all transport spend is fully recovered from customers
• Integrate planning to include budgetary requirements.
• Compile monthly commentary to Finance on Logistics Costs vs Budget/Forecast for hire equipment category being managed

Key Requirements 

• Diploma qualification in Supply Chain or a related field
• 3 - 5 years in Demand and Supply Planning, and Inventory Management·      
• Experience setting up and maintaining JDA customer forecasting and rebalancing workbench modules
• Computer Literacy – MS Office including advanced MS Excel and PowerBI, SAP, Business Warehouse, and Blue Yonder Supply Chain Planning, including Demand planning & forecasting; Inventory management; and Order fulfillment & distribution

Skills and Knowledge

• Demand and Supply Planning
• Inventory Management
• Knowledge of process improvement techniques.
• Ability to thrive in time-sensitive high-pressure environment
• Excellent analytical skills
• Advanced MS Excel skills
• MS PowerBI
• Effective written and communication skills.
• Knowledge of the principles of planning optimization and Inventory Management techniques.
• Ability to collaborate and work effectively in teams of individuals from various business units.
• Strong planning, prioritisation, and organising skills.
• Strong influencing skills
• Customer centric values.