Shop Floor Scheduler

Fantastic challenges. Amazing opportunities.

GKN Aerospace is reimagining air travel: going further, faster and greener! Fuelled by great people whose expertise and creativity sets the standards in our industry, we’re inspired by the opportunities to innovate and break boundaries. We’re proud to play a part in protecting the world’s democracies. And we’re committed to putting sustainability at the centre of everything we do, opening up and protecting our planet. With over 16,000 employees across 32 manufacturing sites in 12 countries we serve over 90% of the world’s aircraft and engine manufacturers and achieved sales of £3.6bn in 2025. There are no limits to where you can take your career.

Job Summary

Translate the Master Production Schedule into a feasible, sequenced, and controlled shop-floor execution plan for assigned value streams, products, and production lines.

Balance customer need dates, production priorities, capacity, labor, materials, tooling, fixtures, maintenance, quality constraints, and work-in-process to protect product safety, configuration integrity, on-time delivery, and efficient resource utilization.

Provide timely, fact-based visibility of schedule risk and coordinate recovery actions across operations, planning, procurement, quality, engineering, maintenance, logistics, and program teams.

Job Responsibilities

1. Production Sequencing and MPS Execution

• Sequence and release work orders in line with the approved MPS, customer need dates, program priorities, and the physical and staffing constraints of assigned production lines.
• Maintain a rolling, time-phased shop-floor schedule that is feasible, balanced, visually communicated, and understood by Team Leaders and value-stream stakeholders.
• Incorporate known downtime, holidays, preventive maintenance, line closures, calibration, qualification, inspection, tooling, fixture, packaging, staffing, and material constraints into shop floor schedule.
• Coordinate changes in sequence or priority through established planning and change-control processes; communicate the operational and customer impact of changes.

2. Constraint, Capacity and Readiness Management

• Confirm that scheduled work is supportable by available raw material, components, tooling, fixtures, equipment, approved process capability, trained labor, documentation, and quality resources.
• Maximize use of shared and constraint resources while maintaining coherence with MPS product mix, required availability dates, batch rules, changeovers, and controlled-process requirements.
• Identify capacity overloads, bottlenecks, shortages, competing priorities, or readiness gaps and develop data-supported scenarios for escalation and decision.
• Coordinate with Procurement, Material Control, Engineering, Quality, Maintenance, and Operations to address conditions that could create supply failure or customer disruption.

3. Daily Performance Control and Recovery

• Monitor actual manufacturing output and performance against the schedule each day; investigate deviations from standard and update the execution plan using approved priorities.
• Track schedule adherence, past-due operations, WIP aging, queue time, yield/rework impact, downtime, run dates, batch quantities, and changeover performance.
• Lead or support recovery planning for missed milestones, material shortages, quality holds, equipment downtime, resource conflicts, rework loops, and urgent customer requirements.
• Provide daily and weekly reporting that distinguishes symptoms from verified causes and assigns clear actions, owners, and escalation dates.

(Cont...)

4. Inventory, WIP and Material Flow

• Monitor stock cover and material availability to prevent shortages while avoiding unnecessary overproduction, excess WIP, aging inventory, or premature starts.
• Adjust sequencing within approved authority when conditions change; escalate decisions that could affect the MPS, customer commitments, inventory policy, contractual priorities, or financial performance.
• Coordinate rework, inspection, hold, and release queues so nonconforming or awaiting-disposition material is not inadvertently scheduled as available production.
• Maintain visual controls and aging reviews that make blocked, at-risk, or excess work visible to responsible owners.

5. Aerospace and Defense Production Control

• Protect product safety, approved configuration, traceability, serialization or lot control, special-process sequencing, inspection points, and customer-specific requirements when building or changing the schedule.
• Ensure scheduling actions do not bypass required quality gates, first-article or production-readiness requirements, training, authorization, controlled documentation, or formal release status.
• Handle program, customer, technical, and production information in accordance with applicable export-control, security, access, and information-handling requirements.
• Support audit readiness by maintaining accurate planning records, rationale for priority changes, schedule status, and evidence of timely escalation and closure.

6. Systems, Analytics and Continuous Improvement

• Maintain accurate actual run dates, quantities, changeover data, order status, constraints, and planning master data in applicable systems.
• Use Excel, ERP/MRP, visual management, and analytical tools to identify schedule risk, constraint performance, and recurring causes of non-adherence.
• Apply root-cause analysis and Lean methods to improve scheduling stability, flow, launch discipline, WIP control, and cross-functional response.
• Standardize recurring planning work through documented routines, review cadence, definitions, and clear handoffs across shifts and functions.

Job Qualifications

• High school diploma or GED equivalent.
• Five or more years of production planning, shop-floor scheduling, material planning, production control, or related manufacturing experience.
• Demonstrated experience sequencing work against capacity, material, labor, tooling, equipment, and delivery constraints.
• Working proficiency with Microsoft Excel and enterprise planning or manufacturing systems used for MPS, MRP, work-order, inventory, and production-status control.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, organizational, written communication, and cross-functional coordination skills.
• Ability to work on-site in an active manufacturing environment and respond to changing priorities with accuracy and discipline.
• Must satisfy all position-specific employment eligibility, export-control, site-access, and security requirements applicable to the work performed, including ITAR/EAR or program requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Business, Engineering, Industrial Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience scheduling aerospace or defense manufacturing, aircraft transparencies, special processes, controlled production, or other high-mix regulated operations.
• Experience with SIOP, MPS, MRP, capacity planning, master data, inventory management, internal logistics, and warehouse interfaces.
• Knowledge of aerospace quality-system expectations, including configuration control, product safety, traceability, nonconformance controls, and on-time delivery.
• Experience working in a matrix organization with Operations, Programs, Quality, Engineering, Procurement, Maintenance, and Finance.
• Lean, APICS/ASCM, CPIM, CSCP, or related training or certification.
• Advanced Excel, ERP/MRP, dashboard, or data-visualization capability.

Compensation Data

Compensation Range: $74,054.00 - $92,567.00

We’ll offer you fantastic challenges and amazing opportunities. This is your chance to be part of an organisation that has proven itself to be at the cutting edge of our industry; and is committed to pushing the boundaries even further. And with some of the best training on offer in the industry, who knows how far you can go?

A Great Place to work needs a Great Way of Working

Everyone is welcome to apply to GKN. We believe that we can only achieve our ambitions through a coming together of diverse minds who enjoy collaborating in an inspirational environment. Through our commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging and by living our five powerful principles we’ve created a culture where everyone feels welcome to contribute. It’s a culture that won us ‘The Best Workplace Culture Award’. By embracing and celebrating what makes us unique we encourage everyone to bring their full self to work.

We’re also committed to providing an accessible recruitment process, so if you require reasonable adjustments at any stage during our recruitment process please get in touch and let us know.

We are the place where human dreams, plus human endeavour, shape the future of aerospace innovation and technology. ​
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