Senior Logistics Planner at CHEP

Position Purpose

• The Senior Logistics Planner is responsible for end‑to‑end planning and fulfillment of customer demand for all equipment within the pallet family representing more than two‑thirds of the organisation’s revenue and forming a critical pillar of business success.
• This role serves as the liaison between Planning & Logistics, Operations and the Commercial Sales teams to ensure alignment between supply and demand. The Senior Logistics Planner will develop the short to medium-term hire equipment demand and supply plan, ensuring sufficient hire equipment is available at the required location at the right time.
• Through stringent data analysis and meta-data insights; the Senior Logistics Planner will control, drive and implement procedures to ensure that the Service Centre network is optimally balanced.  This will include delivering exceptional Customer Experience (CX) through striving toward achieving 100% DIFOT and 100% CIFOT whilst optimizing the cost base.

Equipment Flows (Demand Planning):

• Own the Blue Yonder Customer Forecasting process, working with the Commercial Sales teams to obtain and validate customer forecasts through monitoring and utilising historical demand (issue & return) 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.
• Develop insights through the analysis of meta‑data to deliver clear and actionable recommendations.
• Ensure that equipment supplied and returned on CHEP arranged transport is done so from the optimal location to minimise cost to serve and minimise relocation ratios and costs
• 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.
• Identify customers with short order lead times, and work with the Commercial Sales team to drive improvements in these customers order lead times
• Ability to implement planning with Sales and negotiate availability with Service Centres

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 A and C stock cover to ensure sufficient hire equipment availability to meet demand
• Discuss any shortfall on target production and C stock cover with Operations leaders and make alternative plans to ensure availability of C stock to meet customer demand.

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

• Optimize Pallet Hire Equipment availability across over 80 CHEP locations spread throughout the SSA region, simultaneously ensuring costs are minimised and each location has sufficient hire equipment to support on‑time, in‑full customer order fulfillment through fast, accurate, and informed decision‑making.
• Correctly place customer orders on Blue Yonder or SAP, ensuring that the orders are planned on the lowest cost lanes
• Ensure accurate change codes are applied in SAP 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 while ensuring order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.
• 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.
• Conduct Plant Network Optimization (PNO) studies to ensure logistics operates effectively and efficiently whilst meeting KPI objectives.
• Managing of ZOLCC report (Operations & Logistics costs) to ensure all CHEP arranged transport costs have been accurately charged against customers.
• Compile monthly commentary to Finance on Logistics Costs vs Budget/Forecast for hire equipment category being managed
• Compile monthly CX DIFOT and CX CIFOT commentary for inclusion in the CX scorecard
• Where required, represent Logistics Planning on global initiatives impacting the team
• Capturing and managing Logistics Initiatives on the WAVE platform.
• Carry out any reasonable and lawful requests from line and senior management to support the interests of the business.

Key Requirements

• Diploma Qualification, preferably within Supply Chain and Logistics
• Honours Degree desirable.
• 5 years in commercial/ Industrial environment/ Inventory Control
• At least 5 years in a logistics / transport environment with focus on inventory planning.

Skills and Knowledge

• Knowledge of process improvement techniques.
• Ability to thrive in time-sensitive high-pressure environment
• Excellent analytical skills
• Effective written and communication skills.
• Knowledge of the principles of planning optimization and
• Inventory Management techniques.
• Ability to work effectively in teams of individuals from various business units.
• Strong planning, prioritisation, and organising skills.
• 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