Supply Planner - Groceries at RCL Foods

Our Talent Team is looking for someone who is brilliant at the basics to fill the role of Supply Planner with great attention to detail skills to join our Groceries Operating Unit. The role will report into the Supply Planning Manager and will be based in Randfontein

This position exists to develop and prepare both the short- and longer-term supply plan for Finished Goods, as well as packaging and ingredients, using the forward forecast and balancing it against supply constraints in order to optimise customer service at minimal cost. All this needs to be done taking into account product mix in order to maximise profit when making supply choices.

The role will require working closely with other supply planners, Stock allocation Planner, production, demand planners and the distribution team to proactively ensure that there are no interruptions in supply.

For the Grocery, Speciality BHS and Chicken Business Units, the packaging and ingredients planning will be done by the Material Requirements Planners due to the number of sku’s required to be planned.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Functional Strategy into Action
  • Facilitate integrated supply chain delivery by managing relationships and interaction with cross functional teams.
  • Ensure the agreed SIA is implemented through delivery of own and team targets
• Supply Planning – medium term
  • Develop the national supply plan across all assigned processing plants by balancing the forward demand plan against the processing plants capacity for the next 12 - 18 months.
  • Identify where targeted days cover and customer orders that cannot be met and make recommendations on how to achieve this. This may include recommending working additional shifts or overtime, making changes to the line setup or reallocation of resource. For all options, ensure that a cost assessment is provided to enable the best business decision
  • Manage stock in both quarantine and available for sale to ensure stock is released quickly enough to enable customer service level targets to be met.
  • Understand and use the latest planning standards (production line capacities, plant specialisation rules, warehouse space constraints) to generate the rough cut capacity supply plan.
  • Challenge the planning rates used with production managers where you find the supply bias is consistently positive or negative in order to get the most accurate forward plan.
• Short Term Supply Planning
  • On a weekly basis (and daily when stock shortages are experienced) review demand (demand forecasts and actual orders), stock cover requirements and stock holding positions to provide guidance on priorities, both by SKU or customer, and provide a clear steer to the distribution team on how to allocate stock.
  • Ensure all decisions made drive optimal customer service while maximising profitability and minimising transport costs between regions.
  • Determine the next day’s production based on a combination of actual sales orders, forward forecast and days cover targets.
  • Plan the plant for the next day’s production, as well as the requirement for the next 2-4 days ahead in order to limit volatility when actual customer orders land
• Finished Goods Stock Management using National Days Cover
  • Calculate the stock targets by SKU by using the relevant information to input in the inventory optimisation model (e.g. forecast accuracy, factory reliability, production cycle times, order lead time, customer service levels).
  • Propose stock level targets for agreement by the Supply Chain Management for both national and regional levels (for all stock holding points).
  • Review stock days targets on a periodic basis, at least once or twice a year
  • Make appropriate recommendation on stock where days cover either exceed maximum or are below minimum covers.
  • Pro-actively manage national stock covers within the targeted range, taking into account product innovation, discontinuations, slow moving and obsolete stock across all stock holding points.
  • Liaise with the distribution team to ensure that action is taken to prevent unnecessary costs and maintain a clean stock system.
• Sales and Operations Planning / iCSE
  • Develop the overall supply plan that will be used as input into the company wide S&OP / iCSE process.
  • Provide input into the Supply Planning Meetings and Supply Chain Review on where the risks are for shortages, excess stocks and potential write-offs are for Packaging and Ingredients, as well as for Finished Goods.
  • Identify gaps and opportunities and make appropriate recommendations to close these with the Supply Planning Manager
• Innovation/Discontinuation
  • Drive the coordination for delivery of innovation into the supply chain including attending the innovation meetings and representing the Supply Chain in these forums.
  • Actively manage down stock being discontinued, including working with distribution to exit a sku. Write-offs to be kept to a minimum or entirely avoided if possible. This includes investigating opportunities to use at other sites, working with the R&D team to possibly work away in other products, selling back to supplier.
  • Work closely with Marketing and R&D teams to ensure ingredient and packaging requirements for new product launches are received in order to meet launch deadlines.
  • Calculate estimated bleed outs of packaging and ingredients at the beginning of a project and where applicable provide timeous provisions for write-offs to the project team.
• Supply Chain Reporting
  • Update the scorecards with the relevant KPI's on a weekly/monthly basis and issue.
  • Issue the agreed national outbound supply chain reports on a week/monthly basis as appropriate.
  • Understand the variances against targets for key KPI's and provide explanations and corrective actions required.
  • Generate the agreed weekly supply planning packs/reports and associated minutes.
• Outbound Supply Chain Project Coordination
  • Be involved in projects that drive cost savings or system improvements (e.g.: SAP and other system tools).