YOUR ROLE
Reporting to the Vice-President of Operations of Leclerc Foods, the Demand Planning Analyst is responsible for evaluating and maintaining sales forecasts for all Group customers. He/she acts as custodian of customer orders to ensure that forecasts are promptly updated in SAP. He makes recommendations to the sales support team, who then deal with our customers, ensuring that information and training are appropriate for customers. At the end of the process, inventory levels of work-in-progress and finished goods are under his responsibility. The Analyst works closely with all departments to coordinate short and long term production plans to meet customer service levels. Additionnally, the Demand Planning Analyst will partner with Sales, Marketing, Operations and Finance to develop an accurate demand forecast for all SKUs in the designated area of the business. Accountable to provide focus and integration of data from Marketing, Sales, Customer Marketing, and Finance, which are used to develop accurate and timely forecasts supporting Operations, Sales and Financial Planning. The Demand Planning Analyst ensures consistency of forecast assumptions across the business, including base trends, promotional plans, new launch volumes, planogram changes and seasonal volume.
RESPONSABILITIES
- Manage the quality of demand and forecast data:
- Analyze customer demand against historical demand and propose changes (weekly/monthly) to improve accuracy.
- Act as custodian of customer orders (EDI and manual entries) to ensure readjustment of quantities and delivery dates.
- Help meet specific customer requirements in terms of inventory levels
- Actively participate in weekly S&OP planning reviews
- Establish forecast data exchange partnerships with customers and suppliers
- Manage gross capacity requirements
- Maintain the medium/long-term capacity plan, ensuring that new product launches are factored into the plan
- Monitor new product launches to react quickly and update requirements from the first quarter onwards
- Maintain and monitor performance indicators linked to the proper execution of production plans:
- Measure and analyze inventory levels of finished products and materials resulting from production plans, and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Monitor customer service levels and identify opportunities for improvement
- Monitor forecast accuracy and identify opportunities for improvement
- Monitor adherence to short-term production plans and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Actively participate in process improvement
- Support SAP master data management team as required
- Provide guidance / oversight of SKU level forecasts, to ensure alignment with business direction and consistency with market trends.
- Communicate demand forecast plans and the assumptions behind them through the supply chain.
- Establish and manage SKU level statistical forecasts.
- Gather and incorporate all sources of market intelligence to produce the best possible operational forecast.
- Update and monitor process key performance indicators and diagnostics to ensure continual forecast improvement efforts and prepare written analyses, documentation, reports or other data of a quality requiring minimal supervisory review
REQUIRED SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
- Bachelor’s degree required; preferably in the area of Supply Chain, Mathematics, Statistics, Operational Research, or other quantitative business discipline
- Minimum 5 years work experience preferably within a FMCG industry; minimum of 2 years forecasting experience required
- In-depth knowledge of MRP and SAP principles in a multi-plant environment
- Software Skills: Proficiency with MS Office required, intermediate MS Excel required, advanced Excel helpful; experience with a forecast modeling tool preferred, e.g. Logility; SAP experience helpful
- Ability to make effective presentations
- Ability to extract data from SAP, analyze and recommend an appropriate strategy to develop a production plan
- Strong attention to detail and analytical skills
- Ability to establish and maintain working relationships with colleagues, suppliers and customers
- Working knowledge of:
- Use of quantitative methods to analyze situations and solve business problems
- Data management/databases
- OLAP tools
- Mass market retail environment
- Consumer marketing
- Supply chain operations
- Must have ability to work cross functionally, build relationships and excel in a team environment