Demand Planner at RCL Foods

• The purpose of the role is to drive and facilitate the demand planning and where applicable, demand management process, in order to enable visibility of expected demand to the business and in particular to the supply chain. This forward forecast will be used to improve the business decision making process around product mix, product prioritisation and cost profitability choices; and to drive up customer service levels by enabling the supply planners to plan out unnecessary operational costs and supply risks. The role will require a strong working relationship with customer, marketing, supply planning, distribution, and commercial teams.

Minimum Requirements    

• 2 Years Demand Planning experience ideal
• 2-3 previous Supply Chain experience would be an advantage, particularly in Supply Planning or Distribution Planning; or Customer Marketing experience
• Bachelor of Commerce/Economics Degree, or related Supply Chain National Diploma (e.g.: SAPICS CPIM)

Duties & Responsibilities    

Functional Strategy into Action Operationalisation

• Work closely with customer, marketing, and commercial teams along with other senior managers in the Supply Chain and Customer teams to cocreate the forward demand plan based on a 1-2 year's view of requirements. This will be used as key input into the business volume plans to be used for budget and quarterly planning
• Facilitate integrated supply chain delivery by managing relationships and interaction within the extended supply chain, distribution and customer teams.

Demand Analysis:

• On a weekly and monthly basis analyse actual demand to generate the forward forecast, make recommendations, and drive continuous improvements in order to gain concensus with cross functional teams on the forward forecast (including base & event)
• Understand what is causing differences between what was forecasted vs what was actually ordered, and use this to drive discussions with the front-end team, challenging their assumptions and making suggestions on how to improve accuracy of the forecast
• For price sensitive product groups (like value chicken and sugar) ensure that pricing information and competitor information is gathered as part of understanding gaps to forecast, as well as impact on stock builds or stock shortages.

Generating Base Demand:

• Analyse historical demand and remove anomalies (including outliers) from the norm using historical information, knowledge of the category and by getting input from the customer teams, in order to generate a sound base demand forecast
• Identify the most appropriate statistical forecasting model for each product group in order to generate an accurate base forecast, 12 months rolling forward.
• Generate the base demand plan using the most appropriate statistical forecasting algorithm and make adjustments where necessary
• Understand any variance between actual customer demand and the statistical forecast and make appropriate challenges, changes and recommendations to the base forecast

Events/Promotions:

• Use the promotions grid and related discussion that are provided by the customer team as input into the event forecast
• Work closely with the customer team to document the assumptions for each promotion, driving clarity on volume, price and customers
• Challenge all promotional volume increases when history shows that these have not been achieved before; or if historical the promotions have delivered higher volumes, also challenge to get the volumes increased.
• Present the proposed forecast along with assumptions to get a consensus forecast to be used by the business. This will be done at the monthly Demand Planning meeting.

Publishing and Reporting on the Forecast

• Publish the agreed forecast in the appropriate format to ensure transparency and one set of numbers. This includes ensuring that the Demand Planning tool (Barton) is correct and that these numbers are correctly interfaced to the Group Reporting Cube. The Fixed Forecast will be used by the business to measure the effectiveness of the Demand Planning Process, while the Operational Forecast may be changed more regularly to enable the Supply Planning teams to make better priority decisions should the actual demand be significantly different to what was initially thought.
• Using the agreed forecasting KPI’s (Forecast Bias, Forecast Sku Compliance and Customer Service level) to drive improvement in the forecasts and to minimise volatility. Use these KPI’s to assist when analysing the historical data while generating the forecast
• Publish the forecasting KPI’s in the agreed format, in line with the agreed timeline for weekly reports and monthly scorecards
• Interfacing to the Supply Planning & Distribution Replenishment Planning
• The Operational Forecast will be interfaced to the Supply Planning and Distribution teams daily (including distribution service providers like Vector, SuperGroup and Clover) in order to drive improved priority or scheduling decisions in both Production and Replenishment Planning to depots.
• The demand team needs to liase with the Replenishment Planning teams to ensure that at the national sku level, all numbers match. Demand Planning should also assist when understanding why the national forecast does not split out correctly at a depot level.
• Work closely with supply planning to understand stock builds and space constraints.

Promotional Effectiveness:

• Work with the Customer team to determine promotional activities volume and track the effectiveness of the promotion (costs vs. promotional volume increment). Question the promotional volume based on the success/failure of past promotions

Innovation and Discontinuation Management:

• Work with Marketing, Customer, Supply Planning, R&D and commercial teams to develop the anticipated forecast for new products using appropriate forecast copied from other products plus appropriate market intelligence (eg: store listing, pipe fill, DC ordering)

Document all assumptions

• Track and publish agreed KPI’s for each new innovation
• When discontinuing a product, work closely with the Customer and Supply Planning team to ensure accurate bleedout forecasts to enable a smooth run-out process

Portfolio Management:

• Complete the data analysis to provide input into discussion on portfolio management
• Review the product portfolio at least annually and raise the discussion with business teams on where opportunities exist to remove SKU’s from the portfolio using agreed guidelines.
• Complete the necessary documentation and workflows for all proposed discontinued products, once the business unit team has approved all costs where applicable for the discontinuation. This will ensure the systems are appropriately updated

S&OP Business Planning Process:

• The S&OP business planning process begins with the demand plan.
• Work closely with the Demand Planning manager to deliver the DEM Planning pack, ensuring that the information is available on time and is accurate
• Using the forecasting and customer service KPI’s, work closely with the Supply Planning team to deliver improvements in customer service, particularly by providing insight into stock holding by branches to ensure that promotions are delivered
• Provide the required data to the Commercial team in the appropriate format to enable the annual and quarterly budget planning process

Master Data & Hierarchies:

• Maintain the product hierarchy master data in accordance with both demand planning and business requirements.
• Maintain the master data integrity for Random Weight products, as well as alternate units of measure (eg: litres and dozens) to deliver an accurate forecast conversion between cases and tons, as well as conversions to alternate units of measures (eg: litres and dozens).
• Manage the master data integrity through exception reporting to avoid delays in demand planning tools ability to forecast at SKU and customer level.
• Provide input into Customer Hieracharies when requested.