Demand Planner - Broadband Business Unit

AFL Telecommunications•Duncan, SC

26d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Demand Planner – Broadband Business Unit is one of two dedicated demand planners focused exclusively on AFL Product Solutions’ Broadband business, spanning its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), access network, and service provider portfolio. The Broadband demand planning team is collectively responsible for producing a single, reconciled demand signal for the Broadband business that feeds AFL’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) cycle. The team operates within AFL’s enterprise demand planning function and follows the standards, methodologies, hierarchies, and governance defined by the Director of Demand Planning. Reporting to the Director of Demand Planning, each Demand Planner on the team owns the day-to-day generation, maintenance, and publication of unconstrained and consensus demand plans for an assigned slice of the Broadband portfolio (e.g., customer segment, product family, or region). Working in lockstep with peer planners, the team delivers one consistent, reconciled Broadband demand plan each cycle. Business Unit leadership retains accountability for the constrained, consensus demand plan; the demand planning team is collectively accountable for the quality, consistency, transparency, and governance of the process that produces it.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Engineering, Analytics, or related field.
3–5+ years of demand planning, supply chain, or related analytical experience in a manufacturing environment.
Hands-on experience with a modern demand planning application (SAP IBP, Kinaxis RapidResponse, or comparable platform), including statistical forecasting and segmentation.
Working knowledge of Integrated Business Planning, including the Demand Review process; familiarity with Oliver Wight Class A principles preferred.
Strong analytical skills, including advanced Excel and exposure to BI / visualization tools.
Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to surface assumptions, risks, and trade-offs in cross-functional forums.
Demonstrated ability to operate as part of a planning team — sharing methodology, standards, and learnings across peers — while owning an assigned portfolio end-to-end.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting broadband, telecom/service provider, FTTH/access network, or other high-growth, high-SKU portfolios is a meaningful plus.
APICS CPIM or Oliver Wight IBP foundational training a plus.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end execution of the assigned Broadband portfolio demand planning cycle in line with the enterprise IBP cadence.
Generate, refine, and publish statistical and consensus demand plans at the Customer x SKU x Month level.
Coordinate with peer demand planners on the team to ensure assigned portfolios roll up into a single, reconciled Broadband BU output without double-counting, gaps, or methodology drift.
Maintain accurate planning hierarchies, segmentation, and master data attributes for the assigned portfolio in coordination with enterprise standards and team norms.
Produce timely, decision-ready Demand Review pre-reads for the assigned portfolio, contributing to a unified Broadband BU view alongside team peers.
Apply the enterprise statistical and consensus forecasting methodology to the assigned Broadband portfolio, including FTTH build cycles, service provider deployment programs, and channel/distribution demand patterns where applicable.
Incorporate market intelligence, customer demand signals, lifecycle events, and commercial inputs into the demand plan.
Drive continuous improvement in forecast accuracy and bias using Forecast Value Added (FVA) concepts, with transparent root-cause analysis and corrective actions, sharing learnings across the team.
Enforce override governance: ensure judgmental adjustments are documented, justified, and demonstrably improve — not degrade — forecast quality.
Publish clear assumptions, risks, and opportunities by planning horizon (near-term execution vs. mid/long-term outlook).
Participate in AFL’s Demand Review as one of the Broadband BU’s demand planning representatives.
Ensure the assigned portion of the Broadband demand plan is reconciled with commercial, operational, and financial assumptions, with assumptions explicitly documented.
Surface Broadband-specific risks, opportunities, and demand trade-offs through IBP governance forums for transparent escalation.
Support maturation of IBP cadence, definitions, templates, and governance in line with Oliver Wight Class A principles.
Operate as part of a dedicated Broadband demand planning team, coordinating with peer planners to maintain a unified approach to methodology, segmentation, assumptions, and reporting.
Share market intelligence, customer insights, and forecast learnings across the team to strengthen the overall Broadband demand signal.
Provide cross-coverage for peer planners during absences and peak cycles to ensure continuity of the demand planning cadence.
Participate in team working sessions, peer reviews, and post-cycle retrospectives to drive shared continuous improvement and standardization across portfolios.
Contribute to onboarding, documentation, and playbook development that strengthens the team’s collective capability.
Apply enterprise demand planning standards, hierarchies, segmentation, and methodologies — consistent with team norms — to the assigned Broadband portfolio without unilateral deviation.
Maintain forecasting timelines and decision gates aligned to the IBP calendar for each cycle.
Require documented assumptions and rationale for material forecast changes or overrides within the assigned portfolio.
Surface late, unsupported, or capacity-shaped overrides formally as risks or opportunities rather than silently incorporating them.
Preserve the integrity of the unconstrained Broadband demand signal, separate from supply constraints, allocation decisions, or commercial pressure.
Partner with Broadband Sales, Product Management, Business Operations, and Client Success to capture market intelligence and translate it into an accurate and actionable volume plan.
Collaborate with Supply Planning and Operations on Broadband demand inputs, while preserving an unconstrained view of market demand.
Align with Finance to translate the Broadband volume plan into revenue and margin scenarios for IBP financial reconciliation.
Proactively surface gaps, risks, and opportunities by customer, product family, and segment, and drive cross-functional resolution through the IBP cadence, coordinating with peer planners where issues cross portfolio boundaries.
Use AFL’s demand planning platform (SAP IBP, Kinaxis RapidResponse, or equivalent) to maintain the assigned Broadband demand plan and supporting analytics.
Build and maintain Broadband demand planning dashboards and reporting, jointly with peer planners, for leadership visibility into demand trends and forecast performance.
Partner with enterprise demand planning, IT, and data governance stakeholders to enforce planning hierarchies, master data standards, and data quality for the Broadband portfolio.
Ensure Broadband demand planning outputs are versioned, auditable, and portable (effective dates, assumptions history) for consistent downstream consumption across the team.