Production Planning Manager

Production Planning Manager

Company: Norris Cylinder Company

Primary Location: 521 Green Cove Road SE, Huntsville, AL 35803 USA

Employment Type: Salaried | Full-Time

Function: Administrative

Equal Opportunity Employer Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled

Main Duties & Responsibilities

Job Summary:

Serve as a leader to promote and uphold a quality mindset across site location of Norris. The Production Planning Manager will be an integral part in aligning the production and material supply chain with the manufacturing and customer fulfillment requirements.

Under management direction, including input and guidance - analyze current sales, usage history, and market trends to create material forecasts and production build plans. Organize, adjust, and control our ERP/MRP configuration to create monthly manufacturing plans and procurement demand. Maintain the balance of inventory levels to meet the demands of our market channels while minimizing our inventory investment.

Maintain communication and collaboration between our sales department, procurement, and our production operations. The goal is to improve processes, practices, and products to provide customers with the best value possible.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Engages the leadership team in achieving financial and operational goals utilizing lean initiatives. This includes working with key leadership both functionally and strategically to drive overall improvements for the following goals:

1.Contribution to safety committee and necessary steps to ensure ZERO lost time accidents in 2023

2.Achieve Financial Targets Operating Profit and gross sales

3.Develop and implement action plans to align the proper inventory WIP levels and reduce the overall inventory to achieve NWC targets

4.Develop FAB build plan that pulls our steel supply

5.Create approach to level shipment throughout the month and achieve 95% OTD

Responsible for the management of the following:

Production Planning

• Work closely with operations to develop manufacturing plans based on our published build plans and sales forecasting data. Ensure planning and scheduling activities to convert raw materials to finished products to enable on time delivery to customers.
  
  Working with manufacturing management, maintain accurate product routings. Create and review level loading indicators.

Production Control

• Ensure that the production team can achieve the production plan by regulating inventory management, organizing production schedules, and optimizing utilization of production processes. Create and apply supporting standard work.

Master Scheduling

• Establish the master schedule over a determined horizon for each product family to enable manufacturing actions in readiness to achieve the schedule as promised.

Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning

• Assist with a structured approach to short-term and long-term forecasting and related inventory and capacity effectiveness. Work with manufacturing leadership in capacity planning.

Facilitate the weekly SNOP meetings to develop, measure, and maintain sales forecast data, evaluating deviation of actual versus plan, and then suggesting corrective actions and process variations. Continually update lead times by product family. Provide promise dates to sales team.

Responsible for driving acceptable and accurate inventory levels, limiting operation disruptions, and minimizing inventory shortages and overages. Oversight and reporting controls of a formal Cycle-Count system, meeting the requirements of our TriMas directives.

Work directly with Procurement to establish a plan and controls to attain the target inventory turns per year, and gross margin return on investment.

Facilitation and governance of steel and cylinder component transactions and procurement guideline audits.

Utilizing the production job variance reporting, investigate and identify the root cause of material cost variances, suggest remedies, and recommend the appropriate timing on the updating the standard material costs.

Responsible for the accuracy and efficiency of steel receipts, and component replenishment. Including the establishment and maintenance of proper Min/Max levels for stocking locations.

Monitoring, and improving the volume of intra-company material transfers.

Work with Operations and Procurement to evaluate and identify constraints, measuring, communicating, and strategizing on ways to improve.

Execute duties and improvements utilizing a cooperative team approach with all Company personnel.

Qualifications

Qualifications

10+ years heavy manufacturing experience preferably in steel processing or large steel distributor.

A proven track record of controlling and reducing inventory levels over time while maintaining good part service levels

Item forecasting and production planning

Driving proper inventory levels, maintaining accuracy, and attaining targeted turns

Accurate collection and controls of production item material costs

Material audits - including cycle-count, material transactions, and procurement guidelines

Strong ERP systems expertise relative to utilization for effective planning and tracking, ability to develop the appropriate suite of reports necessary

Syteline knowledge and experience strongly preferred

Bachelor's degree in appropriate discipline

Effective communicator who can work through others to get the job done

Minimum 5 years team management experience

Creativeness and desire to not to be bound by past solutions and to think outside the box in order to drive quality throughout the organization

Ability to lead and collaborate with a cross-functional team

Ability to manage a range of responsibilities is critical

Mentoring & coaching skills