Sales and Operations Planner

Panasonic•Farmington Hills, MI

36d•Hybrid

About The Position

Responsible for the regular coordination and planning of customer demand, factory scheduling agreements, and inventory levels. Acts as the focal point and leader for resolving purchase orders or 3-way match discrepancies, price errors with factories, payment delays or errors, credits, etc. Carries out tracing inbound freight; Resolves delivery/receiving problems. May be asked to monitor and delegate work to MRP department staff .Responsible for the regular coordination and planning of customer demand, factory scheduling agreements, and inventory levels.

Requirements

Four Year college degree in a related field and four (4) years related experience.
Experience includes two (2) years sales administration, sales operations, inside sales, materials planning, or purchasing and two (2) years in automotive or related manufacturing organizations.
Demonstrated ability to originate and author convincing analytical data, often combining disparate data sets (e.g. forecasts, schedules, EDI, ASNs, Inventory, etc) to persuade, influence and negotiate solutions to challenging problems in supply, service, loss avoidance/recovery, cost reduction or business continuity assurance.
Understanding of customer forecast systems and internal purchasing/sales/inventory systems.
Proficient with automotive OEM Purchase Order terms & conditions, MMOG guidelines and
Materials Management requirements, EDI volume change allowances, cancellation recovery policies and contractual penalties.
Proficiency with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Windows based databases as appropriate to the position and assignment.
Advanced Excel and related capabilities, including Pivot tables, Power Query, Vlookup and related data cleansing or combinational tools.
Facility or experience with SAP Procure to Pay, Forecast to Plan, Order-to-Cash and Plan to Deliver.

Responsibilities

Reviews weekly MRP data (demand, factory schedules, inventory position), communicates with factories and authorizes scheduling agreements for procurement from global factories to ensure supply continuity to customers, target inventory levels and/or re-scheduling or expedite as necessary to avoid shortage or loss conditions.
Negotiates weekly with supplying factories the committed rolling production schedule over 12-week horizon, shipment schedules, inventory targets and settlement of outstanding claims on cancellation, loss or freight premiums
Authorizes premium expedites consistent with approval authority guidelines and as appropriate secures customer approvals for compensation on premium shipments.
Tracks essential details for constraint conditions, including track and trace from factory, distribution to point of delivery at warehouse, component shortage resolution etc. Reviews factory monitor, MNET monitor, 3PL and 4PL data and in-transit reports to ensure data integrity and timely alerting of exception conditions.
Evaluates data integrity, process efficiency and error conditions for corrective actions, applying standard tool sets including benchmarking, value-stream mapping, 8D, MMOG and lean principles
Assures continuous improvement on customer service levels, factory utilization, transportation costs, inventory investment, loss avoidance, and loss recoveries as appropriate from customers, suppliers or factories.
Assures continuous improvement on customer service levels, factory utilization, transportation costs, inventory investment, loss avoidance, and loss recoveries as appropriate from customers, suppliers or factories.
Participates in the development of annual business plan inventory TOD targets, provides empirical/theoretical basis for inventory targets, maintains inventory levels, budget guidelines and works to reduce monthly variance to budgeted inventory levels.
Interprets and evaluates the customer’s forecast and usage. Applies relevant analytical tools (e.g. demand waterfalling, variance reporting, compare to contractual capacity etc) to determine appropriate course of action (e.g. negotiate with factory, customer, etc) that assures customer satisfaction, loss avoidance and premium freight compensation
Reports and works with factories to improve on essential KPI’s: On-Time Delivery, Inventory Turnover days, premium /air freight, Loss/obsolescence; develops relationships, holds constructive meetings both remotely and onsite at factories to develop performance/KPI improvement plans, corrective actions and MMOG compliance
Monitors inventory scrap and non-conforming materials, provides timely disposition and initiates the appropriate RFA’s to prevent aging materials at our warehouses.