Demand Planner Leader

As a global leading designer, developer & manufacturer of rigid plastic packaging, Plastipak produces award-winning preforms, bottles and containers for a number of markets, including water, soft drinks, food, dairy, juice and alcohol, personal and home care. Our customers are amongst the best-known brands across the world.

Plastipak has manufacturing plants in North and Latin America, Europe & North Africa. The European division comprises 14 manufacturing plants in 12 countries, and produces around 20 billion units each year. Supported by dedicated research and development centres of excellence, our team ensures our leading position in material, barrier and manufacturing design and development.

Plastipak’s global recycling centers utilize the most advanced recycling technologies globally in converting collected and recycled plastic containers into high-quality post-consumer recycled PET resin (PET PCR or rPET) and HDPE resin. Post consumer recycled resin is converted back into containers for food, laundry, detergent, household cleaners and other common products. In Europe, Plastipak is one of the largest producers of food-grade rPET, with capacity to produce over 120 million tonnes of food-grade rPET (post-consumer recycled) material annually.

Our company in Luxembourg has about 190 employees and produces more than 4 billions of preforms every year as well as 50.000 T of recycled PET. 

In order to reinforce our Team, we are looking to hire Demand Planner Leader (m/f) :

Directly reporting to our Sales Administration Manager, your objectives as Demand Planner Leader are:  

·        Forecasting all activities linked to customer and product forecast for both Luxembourg – German plants

·        Gather market intelligence and steward integration of sales

·        Develop sustainable metrics to reach targets linked to on time production, on time shipment and working capital.

Your main responsibilities will be as follow:

·        Support yearly budget planning with customer and sales input

·        Gather and prepare monthly demand forecast with multiple horizons

·        Review historical data and develop statistical forecast models comparing direct and indirect results

·        Develop MTS vs MTO strategy, binding vs non-binding forecast data

·        Organize monthly/ quarterly demand reviews with key- customers including affiliates

·        Interact with Sales and Finance to gather data to improve forecast accuracy

·        Organize monthly Pre-S&OP with Supply Chain, Sales and Finance

·        Track sales pipeline realisation and product transition with internal stakeholders (sales, development/project engineers, etc.) to adapt commercial ramp-up patterns and in line with service level agreements.

·        Provide customer, affiliate demand requirements to Supply Planning team in order to develop inventory strategy, phase-out and phase-in (ramp-up)

·        Coordinate and communicate customer actions with supply planning team

·        Daily collaboration with stakeholders to ensure lead-time control and monitoring, service agreements execution (including minimum stock, replenishment process)

·        Steward slow moving stock and analyse obsolescence risks, recommend outlet opportunities when possible

·        Support to digitalization of demand planning processes and software development/implementation

·        Analyse and prepare monthly KPIs e.g. forecast accuracy, sales pipeline and FG inventory

Education, work experience, skills and competencies required:

• Enthusiast, curious, will to learn and share, willing to stimulate and enjoy cross- functional collaboration.  
• Minimum 5 years of experience in similar role, ideally in an industrial sector or manufacturing environment
• Digitalization open-mind, with a good understanding of existing demand planning and demand planning tools
• Strong knowledge of ERP (SAP) and MS Office (Excel + VBA) to perform demand planning and forecasting analysis
• Strong mathematical and statistical knowhow, ability to deal with large amount of data
• Proven record of success related to inventory / working capital improvements
• Good verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to lead small to medium sized projects, value & impact.
• Minimum travel requirement within EU
• Fluent in French, English. German an advantage.

Interested to join Plastipak, a committed company that is continually fulfilling our responsibilities to protect the environment for future generations, acting as responsible global citizen for a share community?