Senior Analyst, Inventory Planning & Optimization

This job description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities. The **Senior Analyst, Inventory Planning & Optimization may be required to perform other related duties as assigned to support business needs.

Inventory Planning and Optimization

Analyze demand history, forecasts, lead times, service levels, inventory positions, supplier performance, and sourcing relationships.

Support the administration, validation, and continuous improvement of the ERP planning platform.

Evaluate system-generated forecasts and inventory recommendations, identify exceptions, and recommend corrective actions.

Analyze and recommend changes to safety stock, order parameters, lead times, service-level targets, seasonality, and item-location segmentation.

Conduct root-cause analysis of stockouts, overstocks, forecast misses, inventory imbalances, and ineffective replenishment recommendations.

Recommend inventory transfers, parameter changes, purchasing adjustments, or other actions to improve inventory placement and performance.

Branch Stocking Plans and Assortment Planning

• Develop, validate, and maintain data-driven stocking plans by location, distribution center, category, and item.

• Analyze customer demand, sales velocity, regional needs, product relationships, sourcing paths, and network roles to determine where products should be stocked.

• Measure stocking-plan performance and recommend item additions, removals, substitutions, transfers, or parameter changes.

• Identify assortment gaps, unnecessary duplication, misplaced inventory, and opportunities to consolidate or reposition stock.

• Support recurring stocking-plan reviews with Replenishment, Sales, Product Management, Operations, and other stakeholders.

• Establish reporting and governance processes that ensure stocking plans remain current and aligned with business needs.

Product-Lifecycle Analytics

• Provide analytical support for new-product introductions, product transitions, replacements, substitutions, rationalization, and phase-outs.

• Monitor early demand and inventory performance for newly introduced products.

• Identify lifecycle risks such as declining demand, excess inventory, obsolete inventory, ineffective transitions, and continued purchasing of discontinued items.

• Develop insights and recommendations that support broader SKU-lifecycle decisions.

• Partner with Product Management and Replenishment to improve coordination between product decisions and inventory actions.

KPI Reporting and Performance Insights

• Build and maintain dashboards, models, and recurring reporting for inventory and planning performance.

• Track forecast accuracy and bias, fill rate, stockouts, inventory turns, excess and obsolete inventory, service levels, stocking-plan compliance, and ERP adoption.

• Identify significant performance trends, risks, and improvement opportunities.

• Translate analytical findings into clear recommendations, action owners, and measurable follow-up.

• Present insights to operational teams and senior leadership in a clear and practical manner.

Cross-Functional Support

• Partner with Replenishment, Purchasing, Product Management, Sales, Operations, Finance, and IT to implement inventory and planning improvements.

• Support category, network, and inventory-planning reviews.

• Help establish standardized processes, documentation, analytical methods, and decision-making guardrails.

• Participate in supply-chain initiatives and perform additional analysis as business needs evolve.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business Analytics, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Statistics, Finance, or a related field.

• Three to five years of experience in inventory planning, demand planning, replenishment analytics, supply-chain analytics, assortment planning, or a comparable discipline.

• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and demonstrated experience analyzing large, complex datasets.

• Experience with demand-planning, inventory-optimization, ERP, or replenishment systems.

• Working knowledge of forecasting, safety stock, service levels, lead-time management, inventory segmentation, and replenishment principles.

• Experience developing dashboards and visualizations using Power BI, Tableau, or a comparable platform.

• SQL proficiency strongly preferred.

• Experience with Python, R, or advanced statistical modeling is beneficial but not required.

• Distribution, wholesale, or multi-location inventory experience strongly preferred.

• Strong analytical reasoning, problem-solving, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

• Ability to balance detailed analysis with practical business judgment and clearly communicate recommended actions.