Production Planner

Production Scheduler Location: Covington, LA Position Summary We are seeking an experienced Production Scheduler to develop, maintain, and execute integrated production schedules across multiple manufacturing facilities. This role ensures production plans align with customer demand, manufacturing capacity, material availability, inventory targets, and financial objectives. The Production Scheduler serves as a central planning resource, partnering closely with Operations, Maintenance, Procurement, Sales, Quality, Finance, and Logistics to balance supply and demand, optimize inventory, identify capacity constraints, and provide visibility into production risks, lead times, and trade-offs. Key Responsibilities Develop, maintain, and continuously improve short- and mid-term production schedules across multiple manufacturing facilities. Translate demand forecasts, customer orders, promotions, and inventory targets into executable production plans. Maintain rolling 8–12 week production schedule visibility to support proactive planning and risk management. Balance manufacturing capacity, labor availability, equipment uptime, maintenance requirements, material availability, and customer demand. Incorporate production sequencing and changeover requirements to reduce disruption, improve efficiency, and control costs. Manage finished goods, work-in-process (WIP), and excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory while balancing working capital and customer service requirements. Establish and maintain safety-stock targets based on demand variability, lead times, and production capabilities. Identify potential shortages, excess inventory, and obsolescence risks and recommend corrective actions. Evaluate the financial impact of inventory and scheduling decisions, including carrying costs, write-offs, COGS, overtime, premium freight, and service-level trade-offs. Identify capacity constraints, bottlenecks, and production risks across multiple manufacturing facilities. Develop mitigation plans for raw-material and packaging shortages, equipment downtime, maintenance events, labor constraints, and demand fluctuations. Perform scenario planning and cost-versus-service-versus-utilization analysis to support leadership decisions. Maintain annual and rolling capacity models and identify opportunities to improve manufacturing performance. Partner with Procurement to ensure timely availability of raw materials and packaging while minimizing expediting and premium freight. Collaborate with Operations, Maintenance, Quality, and Regulatory teams to align schedules with manufacturing capabilities, equipment reliability, food safety, and compliance requirements. Support Sales and Customer Service by providing visibility into lead times, production constraints, and fulfillment capabilities. Support the S&OP process by aligning production plans with forecasts, budgets, actual performance, promotions, seasonal demand, and changing business requirements. Analyze manufacturing cost drivers including labor, utilization, downtime, bottlenecks, sequencing, changeovers, yield loss, scrap, substitutions, and expediting. Quantify and communicate the financial impact of promotional spikes, short-term demand changes, and scheduling decisions. Drive continuous improvement in scheduling accuracy, forecast reliability, inventory turns, throughput, production stability, and rework reduction. Apply Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement tools to improve planning effectiveness and execution. Develop and report KPIs related to scheduling, inventory, service, capacity, and manufacturing performance. Analyze root causes of performance gaps and communicate corrective actions, risks, opportunities, and performance trends to plant and senior leadership. Travel to manufacturing facilities as needed. Key Performance Indicators Schedule Accuracy Schedule Adherence Production Attainment On-Time In-Full (OTIF) Material Shortage Incidents Scheduling-related COGS impact Capacity Utili…

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