Senior Demand Planning Specialist Job Details | Nestle Operational Services Worldwide SA

Nestle International • Chicago, IL

71d • $90,000 - $100,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the Demand Plan for Nestle Health Science, Vital Proteins Channel, in the US. This includes implementation of performance standards/operating procedures that affect the Demand Planning function; deployment of related demand planning tools/reports; and maintenance of demand forecast for the business unit. Additionally, this person will be the Champion of the Sales and Operations Planning Process (MBP - Monthly Business Planning), assessing the structure and content of the Forecast Enrichment (FEM), Dynamic Forecast Alignment (DFA) meetings, ensuring robust business processes and facilitating the interaction between Sales, Marketing, Finance and Operations.

Requirements

• High School Diploma is required, Bachelor's Degree is positive.
• Preferred 4 years of business experience in Demand & Supply Planning, Supply Chain Development, Procurement, Physical Logistics, Customer Service, Sales & marketing, Finance or related field.
• SAP experience is Strongly Preferred.
• Proven ability to influence others.
• Demand Planning and statistical forecasting techniques.
• Experience of implementing processes and systems to improve organization and working methods.
• Strong analytical aptitude with a proven ability to analyze/interpret data and build quantitative models of business problems.
• Excellent oral and written skills, organizational and time-management abilities, effective inter-personal skills, and the ability to work with personnel at all organizational levels.
• Flexibility and adaptability to the demands and requirements of a fast-paced environment with multiple demands and priorities.
• Creative thinking skills with emphasis on developing innovative solutions to complex problems.

Responsibilities

• Creates and maintains the appropriate Master Data in the planning systems in use, minimizing errors, avoiding duplication/obsolescence and reflecting product lifecycle (e.g. Product Hierarchy, Finished Goods creation workflow, Demand Lifecycle Management).
• Generates and maintains a Demand Plan for the business unit at the levels (product hierarchy & time) at which the decisions are taken, appropriately considering recent events.
• Understands Demand Planning key performance metrics and targets.
• Consistently improves Demand Plan Accuracy and drives out systematic forecast bias through detailed root cause analysis on past performance, maintaining an efficient learning log.
• Effectively uses all Demand Planning system functionalities to enable an exception based management approach. Implement improvements to the Demand Planning processes and tools to deliver tangible benefits (e.g. time saving, efficiencies).
• Uses appropriate statistical models and parameters, enriching statistical forecast to generate accurate base demand forecast. Collaborates with the Statistical Forecasting Team (Demand Analysts) in improving statistical models.
• Contributes to the cross-functional planning activities according to best practices and ensures necessary preparation and follow up actions for the Monthly Business Planning meetings are completed in due time.
• Makes recommendations on the baseline forecast for the business unit and defends the appropriate changes to the Consensus Demand Plan (CDP).
• Captures, prioritizes and analyses forecast assumptions used in the consensus demand plan, such as Marketing and Sales events, customer, consumer and competitor information, product launches and related cannibalization with impact to the demand plan.
• Analyses actual sales to Customers and sell-out (e.g. POS, if available) data to identify exceptional and un-forecasted activities, challenging the appropriate groups to help explain deviations to forecast. Use findings to drive timely and appropriate actions to minimize the impact of deviations from the Demand Plan.
• Presents outcomes for the Monthly Business Planning process to leadership and get buy-in from the relevant stakeholders.
• Through systematic reporting, ensures the latest Demand Plan is readily available to internal business partners as required.
• Holds meetings with Sales to review past performance of key distributors and identify gaps/changes to their actual sales in vs their trace sales out.
• Facilitate meetings with Sales to review upcoming contract wins/losses, identifying phasing, timing, run rate, quantity, etc and validating with Business Operations that actuals are coming in as planned. Clearly review what's in the CDP with the broader commercial team for alignment and agreement, and work with Finance to identify which initiatives should be included in the DF.
• Create and manage the monthly mid month projection tool, communicating to the MN Leadership team how we project to land for the month, with added input from Sales.
• Actively participates in Demand Planning functional meetings with other business units to share experiences and best practices.
• Cascades knowledge of Demand Planning Best Practices and tools to other Demand planners, new hires and cross-functional teams.

Benefits

• Nestlé offers performance-based incentives and a competitive total rewards package, which includes a 401k with company match, healthcare coverage and a broad range of other benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Industry: Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods
• Education Level: High school or GED
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees