Demand Planner

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation is a world-famous brand with offices across the globe. Fender was born in Southern California and has built a worldwide influence beyond the studio and the stage. A Fender is more than an instrument, it’s a cultural symbol that resonates globally.

We are searching for a Demand Planner to join our team. The Demand Planner function will include the development and upkeep of accurate short, mid, and long-term forecasts, ensuring alignment of supply with customer demand in accordance with budgeted inventory policies. This role involves independently working to build and maintain service levels within the Supply Chain, fostering relationships with partners, customers, and third-party warehouses. You will also look to lead improvement projects within the Planning and Supply Chain.

Essential Functions: 

• Play an active role in supporting the monthly SIOP process, being the back up for the Supply Chain Manager in key process meetings.
• Balancing demand with supply while keeping within inventory targets, using relevant demand planning tools.
• Working with Sales, Product Managers and Marketing to review and agree on demand forecasts, complementing system generated forecasts.
• Monitor trends in customer orders against forecast and identify forecast improvements.
• Maintain forecasts in line with inventory and business rules where relevant.
• Manage supply issues and develop alternative plans where delivery schedules cannot be improved.
• Manage New Product Introduction and End of Life processes in conjunction with Sales, Product Managers and Marketing to ensure that slow moving and excess inventory is minimised.
• Work closely with Sales & Product Managers to reduce Excess and Obsolete Inventory.
• KPI reporting and control analysis on measures such as (but not limited to) Inventory, Forecast Accuracy, Fill Rate, Slow Moving, New Product Introduction and Excess Inventory
• Ability to document processes, write training material for any reporting/tools created.
• Develop relationships with various functions to obtain data, learn business processes; be the advocate for supply chain in any additional reporting/tools needed.

Essential Skills/Knowledge:

• Graduate calibre with proven experience of Demand Planning and/or Inventory Planning
• SAP experience a plus
• Experience with Amazon and BTC a plus
• Experience with Data Science techniques such as, but not limited to, Decision Tree, Linear and Logistic Regression, Naïve Bayes, k-Means and Neural Networks a plus
• Working knowledge of Logility (or similar) planning software
• Strong PC skills with experience of Microsoft packages
• Commercial and financial awareness and acumen
• A self-starter who needs limited guidance as to what/how to analyse data. Curious with a desire to get to the root cause.
• Develop tools/spreadsheets/processes to aid in data analysis and to understand and optimise/improve processes; make recommendations for changes.
• Comfortable communicating across multiple layers in the organisation, can deliver 'bad news' and resolve differing points of view.