MANAGER, DEMAND PLANNING & FORECASTING

Position Summary Inovar Packaging Group's West Coast facility is seeking a Planning, Materials & Continuous Improvement Manager to lead production planning, scheduling, purchasing, inventory management, quality systems support, and continuous improvement initiatives. This position aligns customer demand, manufacturing capacity, material availability, and quality expectations to drive operational excellence and meet customer commitments. The role serves as a key cross-functional leader partnering with Production, Quality, Customer Service, Sales, Prepress, Warehouse, and Finance to improve performance, reduce waste, strengthen process control, and optimize material flow. This individual uses data, metrics, and structured problem-solving methods to improve service, inventory performance, quality outcomes, and manufacturing efficiency. Planning & Scheduling Develop and maintain short- and medium-term production plans based on demand, capacity, materials, staffing, equipment constraints, and quality requirements. Translate customer requirements into achievable schedules, priorities, and material plans. Monitor schedule performance and proactively adjust plans when demand, capacity, materials, quality conditions, or customer priorities change. Identify shortages, bottlenecks, late orders, and quality risks before they affect customer commitments. Facilitate scheduling and production-priority meetings and communicate risks, changes, and recovery plans. Improve schedule stability, on-time delivery, production flow, and capacity utilization. Purchasing, Supplier Management & Material Quality Oversee purchasing of raw materials, operating supplies, and other production requirements. Establish purchasing priorities based on demand, lead times, inventory levels, production schedules, and approved material specifications. Monitor supplier delivery, quality, responsiveness, pricing, and lead-time performance. Partner with Quality to address incoming-material defects, supplier corrective actions, and recurring supplier-performance concerns. Partner with Corporate Procurement to support supplier negotiations, sourcing decisions, cost-reduction initiatives, and supply-risk mitigation. Reduce emergency purchases, premium freight, unnecessary expediting, and quality-related disruptions. Inventory Control & Material Flow Maintain appropriate inventory levels for raw materials, work in process, and finished goods. Improve inventory accuracy through cycle counting, transaction discipline, reconciliation, and root-cause analysis. Establish and maintain safety-stock, reorder-point, minimum/maximum, and replenishment settings. Identify and coordinate disposition of slow-moving, excess, obsolete, nonconforming, and at-risk inventory. Improve material availability, traceability, storage, and handling while reducing unnecessary working capital. Ensure accurate and timely ERP transactions affecting purchasing, production, inventory, and material status. Continuous Improvement & Operational Excellence Develop and execute site continuous-improvement strategies focused on material flow, planning effectiveness, inventory management, quality performance, and operational efficiency. Lead Kaizen events, process-mapping activities, and cross-functional improvement initiatives. Use Lean principles to identify and eliminate waste throughout the value stream. Facilitate value-stream mapping to improve throughput, reduce lead times, and enhance customer responsiveness. Establish visual-management tools, standard work, KPI dashboards, and accountability systems. Prioritize projects based on business impact, track results, and verify sustained improvement through data-driven follow-up. Promote a culture of continuous improvement and employee engagement. Team Leadership Lead, coach, and develop employees responsible for planning, purchasing, inventory control, and assigned improvement activities. Establish clear responsibilities, performance expectations, priorities, a…

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