Site WIP Planner at Unilever

JOB PURPOSE

• To optimally schedule the factory in daily and weekly buckets using customer demand and finished goods stock holding in order to deliver maximum customer service at lowest cost, assist in the reconciliation of supply and total demand for the lines planned and escalate where exceptions exist to South Africa and export hub respectively, provide overflow requirements to third party planner for contingency packs, if applicable, report on and drive the reduction in output reliability losses in conjunction with the manufacturing team, ensure production plans are aligned with FG working capital target and to ensure availability of optimized system generated plans.

WHAT WILL YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES BE

Schedule Production

• Use APO to schedule the factory resources (labour, machine and material) optimally to meet the demand and deliver the customer service level targets.
• Communicate and agree the production schedule with material planners to ensure that sufficient materials are available before presenting plan to the factory.
• Communicate and agree the production schedule with production team on a weekly basis.
• Identify production constraints, re-plan, if there are constraints, resolve constraints and communicate, if unresolved to stakeholders.
• Negotiate alternate plans with Supply Planner to resolve constraints. 
• Provide all contingency 3rd Party requirements for the week 0-4 period (on a rolling basis)
• Flag any risks to delivering export specific volume to the Intercompany Sourcing Manager.
• Flag any risks to delivering local and export (shared SKU) volume to supply planner and Intercompany Sourcing Manager.
• Calculate and propose demonstrated capacities (DC’s) to the Operations team on a monthly basis. Ensure sign off by SUD and implementation for use and the monthly Supply. Update APO master data appropriately.
• Review sourcing unit’s previous week’s performance against plan and agree production orders to be carried over with the Ops team taking into account customer demand and sourcing unit priorities.
• Flag any short-term risks in the 0-frozen period (Category specific) to the Supply Planner weekly before weekly ops meeting.
• Assess the possibility of servicing exceptions raised in the 0- frozen period (category specific) window from a line utilization point of view and liaise with material planners to assess impact on material availability.
• Work with the operations team to generate run schedules per line to minimize downtime and maximize output. Implement and plan according to these where not at the compromise of customer service.

Supply and Demand Reconciliation

• Align with the sourcing unit operations team on the items for inclusion in the sourcing unit calendar for the period of 0 – 104 weeks (use agreed assumptions where firm plans are not available). Agree on shift patterns and overtime assumptions to be used. Supply this to the Supply Planning team monthly.
• Flag any resultant production constraints with the sourcing unit ops team and debottleneck where possible with agreed extra shifts, over time or pre-build.
• Maintain a working knowledge of the CPT in order to support scenario planning for the site.

Output Reliability (OR)

• Review previous week’s factory performance against plan (Latest & Frozen Plan OR) and input into the weekly OR loss tree with sourcing unit input and consensus (owned by Ops).
• Own the planning related losses in the loss tree and put agreed actions in place to minimize losses moving forward.
• Report on losses and plans to improve in weekly Ops meetings and S&OP Supply meeting.

Innovation Projects

• Liaise with the Innovation Planner (PG) to understand trial requirements in the short to medium term and factor these requirements into the sourcing unit calendar. Be the gatekeeper on production time.
• At Charter Gate, with Material Planner input, estimate RM&PM write off as a result of the innovation and share with the Innovation Planner (PG). Continue to refresh and share as necessary.
• Plan the sourcing unit in order to deliver innovation on time (capability and launch production), ensure that material ordering to support the planned production occurs timeously and manage the bleed out of old finished goods stock to ensure write offs are minimized, whilst maintaining service levels.
• Work closely with the material planners and supply planners to ensure that all production plans are aligned to run out the old packaging materials simultaneously. 
• Calculate, estimate and report on bleed outs of FG in conjunction with the Supply Planner and material planner to minimize write offs.

Working Capital Management

• Ensure that production plans are in line with working capital targets (both in terms of week cover and rand value).
• Ensure that production plans are in line with warehouse capacity constraints.
• Assist Factory Accounts and Site Logistics in managing material usage control.
• Own working capital reduction plan at site for FG through run strategy, EBQ optimization etc. Flag any reduction opportunities with the Category Planning Manager.
• Provide and ratify input data to the Supply Planner for generation of the Inventory Planning Model and agree output prior to implementation.
• Maintains all SAP and APO Master data relevant to Factory Scheduling
• Create and maintain MRP master data (MRP 1&2). Maintain all SAP master data relevant to Factory Scheduling (including Interspec); this Master Data needs to include Semi-Finished Goods (Conus, HALBS, FERTS)
• Perform regular Master Data health checks.
• Escalate to Key User and then Business Excellence team when packs / lines are not planning optimally in APO despite diagnostic work on master data to attempt resolution.

Reporting

• Identify and assist Factory Accounts & Site Logistics in MUC management.
• Work closely with supply planning team in updating customer service reports and providing information on recovery.
• Capture OR Losses with sourcing unit stakeholders on a weekly basis (Latest & frozen Plan OR) and communicate to stakeholders.
• Provide data for CCFOT loss analysis to the Supply Planner (losses pertaining to OR).
• S&OP Supply Meeting preparation (and attendance) on demand and supply reconciliation.

WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED

Experiences & Qualifications

• 3 - 5 years in Planning, manufacturing roles
• Relevant degree or Diploma in Supply Chain or related fields
• Fully operational in ‘Plan’ processes
• Understand ‘Make’ and ‘Source’ processes
• Computer Literacy especially MS Office and SAP, Strong excel skills

Skills

• Team and cross functional Collaboration
• Strong planning knowledge
• SAP and Kinaxis knowledge
• Resiliance
• Inventory management
• Waste management
• End to end supply chain knowledge
• Business acumen