Production Planning Professional - Americas

Barilla is an Italian family-owned food company. Established in 1877, it’s now an international Group present in more than 100 countries.

A world leader in the markets of pasta and ready–to–use sauces in continental Europe, bakery products in Italy and crispbread in Scandinavia, the Barilla Group is recognized worldwide as a symbol of Italian know–how.

“The joy of food for a better life” is Barilla’s purpose. Bringing people closer to the joy of good food and making quality the choice for a better life, from each individual to the planet. Because this is how we are nurturing the future, today. It's a commitment from field to fork, to bring to the world tasty, joyful and wholesome products, made with selected raw materials from responsible supply chains. Because what we eat today can change our tomorrow. Because good food is a joy for the present and a choice for a better future.

Introduction – Organizational Details:
Barilla America, Inc. wants to recruit a Production Planning Professional - within Supply Chain in Northbrook, IL. The individual will report to Production Planning Manager.

Job Purpose: Responsible for production planning and all related project management for the repack portfolio for Barilla North America in order to ensure service to customers, inventory in the network, production efficiency, and overall total supply cost.

Key Accountabilities:

1. Coordinate and oversee short, medium, and long-term production plans at production locations to ensure achievement of order fill rate and target inventory levels by SKU at lowest landed cost across the network.
2. Demand analysis: Work constantly with demand planning to analyze demand deviation, set priorities, and solve unexpected situations in terms of customer demand.
Run analysis on total demand in the supply network taking into account capacity constraints and bottlenecks.
3. Responsible for project management for new items, packaging changes, and other business initiatives, ensuring on-time execution with no negative customer impact. Maintain close alignment with the plant to achieve overall business objectives.
4. Collaborate with necessary contacts to set production priorities and adjust production plans to achieve stated service and cost objectives.
5. Capacity management: Work with other internal planners in order to understand if additional co-pack or import volume is necessary; incorporate additional needs into the run strategy
6. Implement and enhance medium and short-term production planning processes and solutions.
7. Lead development and improvement of repack attainment metrics and spearhead initiatives to improve results working with the site as needed
8. Handle unexpected supply issues and work with the supply chain team to implement viable solutions reducing the involved risks and costs
9. Provide clear, timely communication and tactical relationship management with external parties supporting manufacturing operations (e.g., packaging suppliers, raw material suppliers, USDA).
10. Ensure accurate production reporting and timely and accurate product releases
11. Aid in the production budget, taking care of all the master data setup
12. Responsible for maintaining planning master data to ensure the system is up-to-date and running efficiently.

Education/Work Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a business discipline or equivalent experience
• 3-5 years of experience in Supply Chain in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) industry
• Prior ERP experience with Supply Chain Management modules
• Experience with SAP and APO Module for production or distribution planning
• Excellent analytical & problem-solving skills
• High proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Strong project management skills
• Ability to work strategically and tactically with a hands-on approach
• Ability to travel up to 15% domestically as well as internationally

Barilla is an equal opportunity employer. It is the policy of Barilla to prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type and to afford equal employment opportunities to employees and applicants without regard to characteristics including, but not limited to, age, race, color, culture, ethnicity, nationality, faith, religion, gender, pregnancy, family status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, genetic information, veteran or protected veteran status, political opinions, health, or disability.