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, and follow-up routines.
• Provide training, feedback, recognition, and performance support.
• Build cross-training and coverage plans for critical responsibilities.
• Create a collaborative, accountable, quality-focused, and service-oriented culture.

Systems, Data & Performance Management

• Maintain accurate planning, purchasing, inventory, and material-status parameters within the ERP/MRP system.
• Monitor data affecting schedules and requirements, including lead times, order quantities, inventory balances, bills of material, material specifications, and production assumptions.
• Develop practical reports and dashboards for operational decision-making.
• Use data to identify performance gaps, prioritize actions, and measure results.

Key Performance Indicators

• Schedule attainment and on-time delivery
• Material availability and production shortages
• Supplier on-time delivery and supplier quality
• Inventory accuracy, inventory turns, and material traceability
• Stockouts, premium freight, and expediting
• Excess, obsolete, and nonconforming inventory
• Customer complaints, internal defects, scrap, rework, and first-pass yield
• Corrective-action effectiveness and continuous-improvement project results

Qualifications

Required

• Four or more years of progressive experience in production planning, scheduling, purchasing, inventory control, supply chain, materials management, quality, continuous improvement, or a related manufacturing function.
• Working knowledge of manufacturing operations, material flow, and basic quality systems.
• Experience using ERP or MRP systems for planning, purchasing, and inventory management.
• Strong analytical, organizational, communication, and structured problem-solving skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated leadership through project ownership, team leadership, training, mentoring, or cross-functional coordination.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and operational reporting.

Preferred

• Bachelor's degree in supply chain, operations, business, engineering, quality, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Previous supervisory experience or demonstrated readiness to lead direct reports.
• Experience in labels, printing, packaging, converting, or make-to-order manufacturing.
• Experience with Lean manufacturing, 5S, Kaizen, standard work, CAPA, quality systems, or structured problem solving.
• APICS/ASCM, Lean, Six Sigma, quality, or related certification.
• Experience developing operational metrics, dashboards, or data-visualization tools.