Sr. Planner

Senior Planner

As a part of the global industrial organization Marmon Holdings—which is backed by Berkshire Hathaway—you'll be doing things that matter, leading at every level, and winning a better way. We're committed to making a positive impact on the world, providing you with diverse learning and working opportunities, and fostering a culture where everyone's empowered to be their best.

Position Summary: The Senior Planner is responsible for developing and executing production plans that support customer demand, optimize manufacturing capacity, maintain appropriate inventory levels, and ensure on-time delivery in a wire and cable manufacturing environment. This role serves as a key link between Sales, Customer Service, Purchasing, Production, Quality, Engineering, and Supply Chain.

The Senior Planner will manage production schedules across multiple manufacturing processes, including wire drawing, stranding, cabling, extrusion, jacketing, spooling, and/or finished-product operations. The position requires strong analytical skills, manufacturing knowledge, attention to detail, and the ability to respond effectively to changing customer requirements, material constraints, equipment availability, and production priorities.

Key Responsibilities

Production Planning & Scheduling

• Develop, maintain, and communicate detailed production schedules based on customer demand, inventory requirements, available capacity, and manufacturing constraints.
• Convert customer orders, forecasts, and master production requirements into practical production plans.
• Establish production priorities and sequencing to maximize throughput, minimize downtime, and meet customer delivery commitments.
• Plan production across multiple work centers and manufacturing processes, including wire drawing, stranding, cabling, extrusion, jacketing, annealing, spooling, and packaging.
• Balance machine capacity, labor availability, tooling, materials, changeover requirements, and production lead times.
• Identify schedule conflicts and proactively develop recovery plans.
• Monitor daily production performance against the plan and adjust schedules as required.
• Coordinate short- and medium-range capacity planning to support business growth and customer requirements.

Material & Inventory Planning

• Review material requirements and coordinate with Purchasing to ensure timely availability of copper, aluminum, polymers, compounds, shielding materials, reels, packaging, and other production components.
• Monitor raw material and work-in-process inventory levels to prevent shortages while minimizing excess inventory.
• Identify material constraints that may impact production schedules and communicate risks to appropriate stakeholders.
• Support inventory optimization initiatives and establish appropriate planning parameters, including safety stock, reorder points, lot sizes, and lead times.
• Coordinate material availability for production orders and resolve shortages or discrepancies.

ERP/MRP Management

• Maintain accurate planning data, including item masters, bills of material, routings, lead times, lot sizes, safety stocks, and planning parameters.
• Execute and analyze MRP requirements and translate system recommendations into actionable production and purchasing plans.
• Maintain accurate production orders, planned orders, and scheduling information within the ERP system.
• Investigate and correct data issues that affect production planning, inventory accuracy, or customer commitments.
• Generate and maintain planning reports and KPIs.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Work closely with Production Supervisors and Managers to ensure schedules are achievable and aligned with available resources.
• Partner with Sales and Customer Service to establish realistic customer delivery dates and communicate changes to commitments.
• Coordinate with Purchasing regarding raw material availability, supplier lead times, and material constraints.
• Work with Quality and Engineering on nonconforming material, product changes, process changes, and new-product requirements.
• Participate in daily production meetings and provide updates on schedule attainment, constraints, and recovery actions.
• Escalate potential customer-impacting issues promptly and recommend corrective actions.

Continuous Improvement

• Analyze production performance, capacity utilization, inventory levels, schedule adherence, and manufacturing constraints to identify improvement opportunities.
• Support initiatives focused on reducing lead times, improving on-time delivery, increasing throughput, reducing WIP, and optimizing inventory.
• Develop and maintain planning KPIs and dashboards.
• Participate in Lean Manufacturing, S&OP, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Identify recurring scheduling and material issues and implement sustainable solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Operations, Business, Industrial Engineering, or a related field preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in production planning, scheduling, materials planning, or supply chain within a manufacturing environment.
• Experience in wire, cable, electrical products, metals, plastics, extrusion, or other continuous/process manufacturing environments strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of MRP, production scheduling, capacity planning, inventory management, and manufacturing processes.
• Experience working with an ERP system such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, Epicor, or similar.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including pivot tables, lookups, formulas, and data analysis.
• Strong analytical, organizational, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with production, purchasing, sales, engineering, quality, and management teams.

Preferred Experience

• Experience planning products with complex routings, multiple manufacturing stages, or make-to-order requirements.
• Knowledge of copper and aluminum wire manufacturing processes.
• Understanding of extrusion, stranding, cabling, jacketing, shielding, spooling, and finished-wire/cable operations.
• Experience with finite-capacity scheduling and constraint management.
• APICS/ASCM certification such as CPIM or CSCP is a plus.
• Experience with Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or S&OP processes is preferred.

Following receipt of a conditional offer of employment, candidates will be required to complete additional job-related screening processes as permitted or required by applicable law.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all applicants will be considered for employment without attention to their membership in any protected class. If you require any reasonable accommodation to complete your application or any part of the recruiting process, please email your request to View email address on click.appcast.io, and please be sure to include the title and the location of the position for which you are applying.