Junior Demand Planner - Westville at RCL Foods

Job Description    
At RCL Foods, we believe in growing what matters!  As a leading food manufacturer, our goal is to nourish people with a portfolio of trusted brands and products. We are committed to innovation, sustainability, and the development of our employees.

We are seeking   x2 Junior Demand Planners , highly motivated and detail-oriented  to join our dynamic Supply Chain team. In this role you will be responsible for to deliver a base forecast with promotional uplift in order to facilitate the demand planning and management process to enable visibility of expected demand to the business.

This forward forecast will be used to drive the short-term production, material requirements plan and stock allocation plan, to improve 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.

Minimum Requirements    

• Bachelor of Commerce/Economics Degree, or related Supply Chain Degree
• 2 years’ experience in Demand Planning or Supply Chain Role and have worked in a FMCG company.
• Intermediate ability in Excel is a prerequisite.

Knowledge and skills

• Critical Thinking Skills
• Problem Solving Skills
• S&OP process awareness
• A Strong ability to analyse numbers and understand trends.
• Excellent attention to detail and able to work independently.
• Good communication skills: Strong verbal and written communication.
• Strong relationship building and Inquisitive approach with an emphasis on sound interaction and excellent relationship with the front-end team.

Duties & Responsibilities 

Functional Strategy into Action Operationalisation

• Work closely with customer and marketing, to co-create the forward demand plan for the next 13 weeks rolling for a less complex portfolio. This will be used as key input into the forward supply chain plans. 

Demand Analysis:

• On a weekly basis analyse actual demand vs the forecast understanding what is causing differences 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 the next 13 weeks.
• For Make to Order production (Beverages & LiveKindly), closely watch the forward forecast vs historical demand to ensure that there is a good correlation between the two in order to proactively adjust the forecast with consensus with the Demand Planning Manager. 

Generating Base Demand:

• Generate and maintain a statistical base forecast for the category.
• Weekly cleansing of sales history (by removing anomalies) based on insights from customer teams.

.  Events/Promotions:

• Use the promotions grid and related discussion that are provided by the front end team as input into the event forecast
• Work closely with the front-end team to document the assumptions for each promotion, driving clarity on mechanics, volume, price and regions.
• Provide historical data on comparative promotional volume to improve the accuracy of the agreed promotion uplift.
• Review the promotional uplift expectations vs forecast assumptions and document for future reference.

Publishing and Reporting on the Forecast

• Using the Demand Planning tool (Barton) ensure the information 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.
• Publish the forecasting KPI’s in the agreed format, in line with the agreed timeline for weekly reports and monthly scorecards.
• Take minutes at the monthly Demand Review.
• Distribute the minutes timeously and follow up on action taken.

Interfacing to the Supply Planning & Stock Allocations Planning

• Meet with the Stock Allocations Planners weekly to communicate upcoming promotions, and associated regions, dates, volumes.
• Review the forecast for the next 13 weeks to correctly interface Supply Planning.
• Highlight changes to the forecast week on week.

Innovation and Discontinuation Management:

• Review the Master Data to ensure it is complete and ready for all innovation SKU’s.
• Input the signed off innovation volumes as per the NPD process.
• For building of NPD volumes, including pipefill and year 1 volumes and document assumption.
• Track agreed KPI’s for each innovation for input into the Innovation Tracker.
• When discontinuing a product, ensure that the forecasts are removed as agreed and Master Data is update accordingly.
• Highlight any expected delay in run out when forecasts are not materialising.

Master Data & Hierarchies:

• Maintain the product hierarchy master data in accordance with both demand planning and business requirements.
• Maintain the master data integrity for 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).
• Check the master data integrity to avoid delays in demand planning tool’s ability to forecast at SKU and customer level.
• Work with the Master Data team to ensure hierarchy changes are appropriately planned.
• Provide input into Customer Hierarchies when requested.

Ad hoc / Other:

• Maintain all weekly and monthly reports, files and documents centrally and in an organized fashion on the Business Planning site.