Americas - Inventory Planning Manager

Clarks•Needham, MA

1d•$80,000 - $100,000

About The Position

This managerial position is responsible for monitoring the inventory forecasts across three product and two fiscal seasons and managing the inventory through its lifecycle.

Requirements

Accountable for delivering financial and inventory productivity performance in line with or above annual targets for the Women’s Footwear Category in the Americas Region.
Periodic business and market/channel reviews for the Women’s Footwear Category, including KPIs and distribution performance against targets.
Effective management of in-season inventory and stock pools.
On-time delivery of high-quality long-range capacity projections to the Group Supply Chain and forecasting buy quantities to procure inventory to the Group Supply Chain.
Regional Buying and Merchandising-related KPIs, metrics, and reports to monitor product, sales, stock, and margin performance across all Channels, Markets, and as a consolidated Region for the Women’s Footwear Category.
Timely and accurate systems data management for the Women’s Footwear Category, including buffer stock settings, capacities, lead times, color/size/width profiles, planning, forecasting, product life-cycle flags, etc.

Responsibilities

Manage, develop, and train one or two Inventory Planners.
Work cross-functionally with other departments to implement new processes within the organization to optimize style-level plans.
Work closely with the Merchandise Planning group to reconcile the consensus plan, forecasting unreleased to maximize turn expectations.
Supervise OTB flow for the current buying season and an extended 18-month strategic open-to-buy plan for future product seasons.
Responsible for purchase order execution responsibilities, including collaborating with Merchandise Planning and Category management teams to achieve a realistic initial and fill-in process.
Analyze historical inventory cycles and distribution channels.
Adapt and react to market trends during each forecast cycle.
Provide forecast reviews and account and channel distribution reports to the business unit.
Contribute to product development to plan and move current inventories and develop future product forecasts.
Manages in-season inventory management, including reviewing stock-to-sales ratios, responding to changing sales trends, identifying risks and opportunities to ensure planned sales, and closely monitoring shipments, customer orders, returns, and sell-through percentages at retail.
Tracks in-season inventory at once business.
Monitors in-season available inventory.
Responsible for monthly ship plan for monthly Logistics Center inventory control report.
Oversee purchase order placement, including creating purchase orders, working with factory lead times and capacities, determining color percentages and SKU profiles, converting work orders into purchase orders in the SAP system, and releasing Purchase Orders to Production Planning each month, consistent with merchandise planning plans; analyzing customer orders at the SKU level to ensure proper inventory balance and agreement with the consensus forecast, tracking and coordinating purchase orders for on-time delivery to the Logistics Center, and communicating inventory availability and delays to relevant company departments; communicating system factory routing and system capacity needs to Supply Chain Department for Supply Chain Systems to operate properly.
Responsible for ensuring their team maintains the integrity of the data in the system, including buffer stock settings, capacities, lead times, color/size/width profiles, planning, forecasting, product life-cycle flags, etc.
In addition to managing & forecasting articles for a portion of the business, responsible for roll-ups of total forecasts & other purchase summaries for all footwear production planning.