About The Opportunity
Nature’s Path has a newly created position for a Demand Planner. We’re looking for an individual who has an entrepreneurial mindset, challenges the status quo and is a problem solver who leverages data and analytics to create positive change for our customers and our triple bottom line.
This position will be responsible for helping improve our supply chain planning capabilities through trend analysis, gap analysis, predictive modeling, analysis of historical sales performance, inventory levels, promotional plans and market intelligence which is collated and presented in a compelling manner.
This position is responsible for demand forecasting focusing on a long-term horizon utilizing customer demand trends, consumption data, and commercial input and insight from Sales & Marketing teams, maintaining a high level of forecast accuracy, and integrated inventory management.
The successful candidate will: focus on improving our demand forecast accuracy and our supply planning capabilities to reduce variability, enhance our production planning and scheduling to increase throughput, while optimizing inventory, minimizing downtime and waste – a key role to help improve probability.
Take customer centricity and sales seriously and want to have fun at work with the Natures Path team! You value integrity and you take ownership and show initiative in everything you do and are performance driven. You not only love the culture and contribute to it. Health and Wellness is not something you read about, it’s something you live.
Role Objective:
- The key objective of this position is to drive process improvement within the demand planning function with the overall goal of increasing forecast accuracy.
Details:
- Reporting to the Senior Sales Financial Analyst, this position will support our exponential sales growth by balancing supply and demand to ensure availability of the right product at the right time, with heavy emphasis on a sense of urgency, internal and external collaboration and teamwork.
- This position is an integral part of our supply chain and plant production team that works with our sales, production and logistics partners to create accurate and up-to-date demand and supply forecasts for production scheduling. (S)he will ensure maximum plant utilization through efficient production scheduling and inventory/shelf life management; the tracking of progress and reviewing of factors which affect production schedules. Ensure that manufacturing schedules maximize company efficiency and satisfy customer needs.
- This position is responsible for creating, validating, gaining cross functional alignment and communicating a demand plan of all products. This demand plan is primarily utilized as the basis for all short term and long-term labor planning activities and requirements. The demand plan is a critical input for many foundational strategic projects.
Position Responsibilities:
- Own the demand and supply planning processes and tools to resolve demand/supply imbalances caused by schedule changes, constraints, downtime, promotions / events
- Ensure production meets the demand forecast from Sales and work with Sales to improve demand forecast accuracy
- Reduce supply variability through problem solving, collaboration and continuous improvement
- Review and amend planning policies to improve production and process efficiency and/or forecast
- Manage process for incorporating and communicating off-cycle forecast adjustments
- Core contributor of the S&OP cycle with cross functional team consisting of Marketing, Sales and Finance to align to an unbiased forecast number.
- Quantify risks and opportunities by analyzing historical performance against sales and inventory levels, provide appropriate recommendations to support overall company financial objectives by achieving service rate and inventory level targets.
- Provide regular and consistent forecast accuracy and service level KPI's to the Customer Leadership team, Business Teams and to senior management.
- Developing systems and processes, implementing structure to improve consistency within demand planning and inventory department.
- Gather market intelligence from Business Development Team in terms of POS data, inventory policy, stock-in-trade, and anticipated buying behavior to understand, quantify, and fulfill customer/market specific requirements.
- Analyze demand trends in conjunction with upcoming marketing efforts and determine effects on the demand forecast.
- Monitor, track and report on new product forecasts.
- Monitor and evaluate promotional impact data and make informed decisions on forecasts as a result.
- Communicate the forecast and critical forecast changes to those affected by the change within Marketing, Business Development, Supply Planning and Operations.
- Optimize inventory movement by developing strategies to improve network flow, turn, and lower costs as well as remove aged / non-productive inventory.
- Identify process improvement opportunities and present them to senior management with recommendations and alternatives.
- Willingness to sit alongside team members and “show the way” while setting clear expectations and accountability
- Proven track record of building strong relationships with cross functional stakeholders to align on common goal.
- Create, validate and work collaboratively with leadership roles throughout global sales, customer development, business teams, operations and finance to gain consensus on a demand plan for all products.
- Strong, professional and clear communication skills to the global sales, operations and business teams to incorporate all of the relevant business intelligence into and out of the optimized demand plan which is core to supply planning.
- Creation and maintenance of planning processes and feedback loops.
- Use detailed knowledge to interface with leadership teams to identify cost and risk within business decisions while making recommendations to continuous improvement.
- Use detailed knowledge to develop strategic framework for the development of forward looking plans (3 yr, 5 yr), P&L impacts while providing systemized reporting to influence logistics and replenishment senior leadership to change processes with the purpose of improving service levels.
- Lead development of daily forecasting requirements to support Global Sales team.
Critical outcomes for this role include:
Provide high-level communication to executive team regarding opportunities for growth.
- Analyse results achieved against objectives and initiate action to optimize performance.
*The description above represents the most significant essential duties of the job but does not exclude others
Success in this role will require:
Primary Requirements:
- Passionate about working with large sets of data and transforming this data into critical information and insight to support business decisions.
- Strong logical reasoning skills and business intelligence along with deep understanding of data structures and a strong working knowledge of databases.
- Demonstrated track record of achieving tough, demanding goals.
- Strong strategic and tactical skills and an ability to solve problems and set priorities.
- Excellent communication and listening skills with the ability to adjust style to effectively interact with external customers and internal cross functional team members.
- Ability to translate strategy into actionable plans.
- High Sense of Urgency, Agile, Competitive, Motivator & Calculated Risk Taker.
- Thrives in an environment of adversity and has successfully led change management.
Qualifications
- At least 8-10 years of experience with data analysis, statistical methods and trending in a business-related field such as supply chain, marketing or finance.
- Degree in statistics, engineering or economics, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Proficiency in the use of a statistics modeling and utilization in ERP platforms such as SAP or IFS.
- Strong understanding of database design and data modeling.
- Proficient in data mining and statistical analysis models, structures, theories, principles and practices.
- APICS certification preferred.
Nature’s Path “Must-have’s”
- You have an unrelenting desire to be successful and to always improve
- You have a sense of humour and passion for health and wellness
- You love to have fun, but take your responsibilities seriously
- You have a high sense of urgency and act with speed and agility
- You are comfortable being uncomfortable and thrive in adverse situation
Upon joining Nature's Path, you will become part of a vibrant team that contributes to bringing healthy, organic food to the world in a sustainable way. At Nature’s Path, we follow 5 core competencies and, as a result, strive to build a culture that is: performance driven, always improving, team focused, honourable and respectful, and sustainably and socially conscious.
We thank all applicants for their interest in Nature’s Path Foods; candidates selected for an interview will be contacted by Nature’s Path.
About Nature's Path
Nature's Path is a sustainably-driven, deliciously-healthy organic food company that believes in "leaving the earth better than we found it". At Nature's Path, we believe in the idea that you can come to work, and help make the world a better place in the same day. Nature's Path has received numerous awards such as the Greenest Employer award, BC's Top Employers award, and Financial Post's Ten Best Companies to work for in Canada!
As a family-run, privately-owned company with locations in Canada and the U.S., our company was founded with strong entrepreneurial spirit and mission to leave the Earth better than we found it, which has become part of everything we do. Since our establishment in 1985, we have expanded to employ a team of over 600 employees in U.S. and Canada! Our company's innovative brands include Nature's Path, Love Crunch, Envirokidz and Que Pasa.
Our goal is to be a trusted name for quality organic foods in every home, socially responsible, environmentally sustainable and financially viable. We believe that everyone should have access to delicious food that is both good for people and the planet. If you share our vision, please explore our opportunities and take the path to a new and exciting career! Visit Nature's Path online at www.naturespath.com, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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