Inventory Planning Manager

As the inventory planner for our cutting-edge organization, you will lead the charge in developing, implementing, and sustaining best-in-class inventory strategy & visibility.  This dynamic position requires a forward-thinking approach, with a bias toward action that protects the customer and the company today.  The inventory planner will need to partner across sourcing, new product planning, datacenter operations, and finance amongst other teams to design, align, and operate inventory plans that achieve objectives.  This individual will be instrumental in ensuring optimal inventory levels enable growth, while managing potential risks efficiently.

The inventory planner will need to develop category-specific inventory targets, with an automated, intelligent, and reactive control system that adjusts for real-time supply chain events.  The inventory planner will be responsible for the creation of systemic controls, governed by user-specific alerts and required actions.  The inventory planner will play a critical role in influencing overall supply strategy, understanding general spatial requirements, and help to optimize cashflow across all material categories required to operate the business.

Key Responsibilities:

• Create inventory targets and reorder points for consumable & repairable parts.
• Present the inventory plan for periodic governance with stakeholders and leadership, including well-written reports that include tables and graphs to support the plan.
• Translate inventory strategy into customer commitment.
• Make informed recommendations for changes to material positioning strategy due to real-time events, market conditions, or anticipated customer behavior.
• Develop inventory transition strategies.
• Test any software for accuracy per the inventory planner’s own models.
• Exercise creativity and optimization approaches leveraging existing supply for new purposes of higher priority and reuse supply not designated for other purposes to satisfy new demand.
• Apply basic statistics such as average and standard deviation, assuming normal distribution models, to derive a buffer or safety stock quantity that best serves the business considering current supply and demand variability.
• Work with other roles within Supply Chain and vendor base to drive variability (e.g. standard deviation in process) down and cycle time down.
• Understand Little’s Law and its application to discern expected inventory for given throughput and cycle time, as well as inventory targets for expected throughput and desired cycle times.
• Understand re-order point concepts, calculations, and the application of them for all components and all parts of the supply chain they manage.
• Drive root cause and corrective actions to restore inventory to expectations and drive it towards new targets.
• Anticipate history repeating events that lead to changes in supply lead times, such as product life cycles, economic cycles, weather, supply-demand imbalances; also, discern the implications of non-historic events such as natural disasters, armed conflicts, and class-level quality issues.
• Understand various costs that affect supply chain and supply decision tradeoffs—e.g. purchased or capital cost, depreciation schedules, warehousing costs, logistics (normal vs. expedited, sea vs. air), negotiations, overtime charges, obsolescence, accounting write downs.
• Propose recommendations to senior leaders, data center personnel, sales, etc. when tradeoffs need to be made between time to delivery and cost.
• Know the map of material flow for all managed components, the vendors in that flow, and any alternatives to that flow or vendors; be aware of changes to those maps as they occur and implications of those changes to timing of purchase orders and on-time delivery.
• Understand the unique states of a product lifecycle including launch/ramp, run rate, and end of life and properly plan within those unique states to balance assurance of supply with cost.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, business administration, or related field. Engineering degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Aerospace, and Industrial is a plus.
• 6+ years of experience in supply planning, inventory management, or related field.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Able to calculate average and standard deviation, to derive insights from points in time and trends.
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel including quickly assimilating data from multiple sources, creating pivots, reducing time from data to information, information to insights, insights to decisions.
• Strong attention to detail and accuracy in work.
• Experience with ERP or supply chain planning software is a plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including creation of diagrams, charts, and tables.
• Ability to work independently and manage multiple priorities in a team environment.