Senior Production Planner

We are seeking a Senior Production Planner (Planning Engineer) to lead production planning activities to ensure the efficient flow of materials and work across manufacturing and distribution operations. Based at our Melrose Park, IL corporate headquarters and reporting to the General Manager, this role serves as a senior planning leader supporting production and logistics planning across all U.S. manufacturing plants and distribution centers. Working alongside a team of approximately five planning professionals, the Sr. Planning Engineer collaborates closely with Production, Sales, Shipping, Engineering, and Management to optimize schedules, meet customer demand, improve operational performance, and achieve on-time delivery objectives.

Responsibilities:

• Coordinate and expedite the flow of work and materials according to the master schedule.
• Schedule, review, follow, and control production plans according to material inventory and customer orders in SAP, conferring heavily with production management in US and Mexico plants and distribution centers.
• Participate in the daily Plant Management meeting, conferring with department supervisors to determine progress of work and completion dates in order to plan work.
• Ensure that the designated manufacturing and shipping daily goals are met while contributing to the efforts in the plants to reduce scrap.
• Analyze the shipping capacities based on location and product and available resources in order to properly match the workload to the number of resources and meet lead times as needed by sales department.
• Analyze delays or interruptions and adjust production schedule accordingly to meet deadlines. Recommends methods for improving utilization of material, and utilities to reduce downtime and increase productivity. Communicate heavily with sales on delays that may affect lead times.
• Communicate among departments like sales, shipping, plants, engineering and Management in Barcelona to update goals and report on tons manufactured and shipped on a daily basis.
• Work to reduce obsolete inventory and other duties as needed.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering with Master’s Degree preferred.
• 5 – 10 years of experience in a similar position or otherwise related experience
• Personality: Candidates must have integrity, be highly analytical, and have a strong desire to be deeply involved in the business. Candidates must be organized and methodical in their work, with the ability to learn quickly and adapt easily to change. Candidates must be able to preserve through difficult work challenges with the highest degree of dedication. Candidates must have strong interpersonal skills with the confidence to interact and communicate effectively with personnel from all levels of the organization.
• Ability and desire to work on-site at our Melrose Park, IL headquarters
• Ability to travel 10% - 20% of the time to our other U.S. facilities (mainly Pontiac, IL and Sumter, SC)
• Fluency in English and Spanish is preferred.