Production Planner

The Production Planner is responsible for developing and maintaining executable production schedules that align customer demand, material availability, and manufacturing capacity.

This position partners closely with Materials, Manufacturing, Engineering, Sourcing, and Customer Service to identify constraints, communicate schedule risks, and support production readiness.

The ideal candidate possesses strong analytical skills, SAP proficiency, and the ability to interpret data, identify issues, and support effective decision-making across the business.

Success in this role requires a proactive approach to schedule management, attention to detail, and the ability to anticipate and communicate risks before they impact production or customer delivery.

This role moves beyond transactional order scheduling by supporting schedule integrity, production readiness, and stable factory flow.

Key Responsibilities:

Production Planning & Schedule Management

• Develop and maintain daily, weekly, and monthly production schedules aligned to customer demand and plant capacity.
• Ensure all production orders released into manufacturing are executable and meet established readiness requirements.
• Balance demand, labor capacity, material availability, and equipment constraints when creating schedules.
• Maintain schedule stability while minimizing unnecessary schedule changes.
• Support development and management of the Master Production Schedule (MPS).
• Validate production readiness prior to order release.
• Identify risks impacting schedule attainment and implement corrective actions.
• Partner with Materials Management to ensure production plans align with material availability.

SAP & ERP planning

• Leverage SAP data and planning tools to analyze material availability, capacity constraints, and schedule risks to support effective production execution.
• Maintain planning parameters, production orders, routing data, and planning master data.
• Drive data accuracy across:
  • BOMs
  • Routings
  • Production versions
  • Planning parameters including lead times
• Identify and resolve SAP transactions impacting schedule execution.
• Support ongoing SAP process improvements and training initiatives.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with Planning, Materials, Manufacturing, Engineering, and Customer Service to support execution of production schedules.
• Coordinate follow-up actions related to material shortages, schedule constraints, and production risks.
• Communicate schedule changes, production priorities, and potential delivery risks to appropriate stakeholders.
• Support production recovery efforts by tracking action items and providing updates on schedule performance.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to identify and resolve issues impacting production readiness and schedule attainment.

Production readiness & Analytics

• Monitor schedule performance, production readiness, and plan adherence.
• Analyze data to identify risks, constraints, and improvement opportunities.
• Maintain planning reports and KPI dashboards.
• Support corrective actions for recurring planning and scheduling issues.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain, Operations, Engineering, Business, or relevant experience preferred. Equivalent combinations of education, technical training, APICS certification, military experience, and demonstrated production planning experience will be considered.
• Must have 3-7 years of production planning, materials planning, scheduling, master scheduling, or supply chain experience.
• Experience using SAP, ERP, MRP, or advanced planning systems is required.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional actions and driving priorities.
• Proficient in Excel and production planning tools.