Production Planning Manager

AT A GLANCE  

The Production Planning Manager leads end-to-end production planning, monitoring, and execution across assigned product categories through external suppliers and contract manufacturers. This role oversees production planning activities ensuring production schedules, supplier commitments, international customer requirements, inventory needs, and shipment readiness are aligned with Sunnies Inc.s launch timelines and business priorities. 

YOUR OVERALL MISSION & DAY-TO-DAY 

Production Planning and Execution 

• Lead the overall production planning, scheduling, and monitoring for assigned product categories  
• Establish and maintain standard lead times, production sequences, planning parameters, and critical milestones to ensure factory, packing, and shipping deadlines are achieved. 
• Review and approve production plans and schedules prepared by the team before alignment with Strategic Sourcing and Development and other cross-functional teams. 
• Ensure daily, weekly, and monthly production plans are accurate, realistic, and aligned with demand, inventory requirements, launch timelines, and supplier capacity. 
• Monitor overall production progress and proactively address deviations that may affect inventory availability or business timelines. 
• Establish planning priorities based on product launches, customer requirements, inventory needs, and business priorities. 

International Customer Order Fulfillment 

• Oversee the fulfillment of international customer orders, ensuring stocks are properly allocated, monitored, and prioritized throughout production and pre-shipment stages. 
• Ensure compliance with customer-specific packing, labeling, cartonization, documentation, and shipping requirements. 
• Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure export readiness and timely shipment execution. 
• Identify risks to international deliveries and lead to mitigation and recovery plans to prevent short shipments, delays, and service failures. 
• Provide management visibility on international order fulfillment status, risks, and recovery actions. 

Supplier & Contract Manufacturer Management 

• Serve as the primary escalation point for production delays, capacity constraints, quality-related schedule risks, and other execution issues involving suppliers and contract manufacturers. 
• Lead the development and implementation of mitigation and recovery plans for production risks, compressed timelines, capacity limitations, and unexpected delays. 
• Monitor supplier performance against agreed production schedules, lead times, capacity commitments, and service levels. 
• Partner with Strategic Sourcing and Development team to assess supplier reliability, lead time performance, production capacity, and opportunities for supplier improvement. 
• Drive supplier accountability and ensure recurring production issues are addressed through corrective and preventive actions. 
• Provide inputs on supplier performance and production capability to support sourcing and supplier management decisions. 

People Management & Team Leadership 

• Supervise and coach Production Planning Associates 
• Assign workload, set priorities, and ensure clear role ownership per category. 
• Review team outputs including production trackers, reports, and system entries for accuracy and timeliness. 
• Identify skill gaps and support team development in production planning, supplier coordination, and system usage. 

CORE COMPETENCIES 

• Creative: Guide teams to think differently and experiment with new ideas. Remove barriers to innovation and scale successful practices across the organization 
• Considerate: Model empathy, sound judgement and composure across teams. Promote responsible and sustainable ways of working that support people, operations, and the broader community. 
• Customer Focused: Coach teams to deliver seamless and consistent experiences. Use insights and feedback across teams or stores to continuously improve service and operational flow. 
• Continuously Learning: Build a culture of learning by coaching others and enabling teams to adapt to change. Create structured opportunities that strengthen capabilities across functions. 
• Collaborative: Strengthen collaboration by coaching others on trust, alignment, and accountability. Facilitate cross-functional that drives shared ownership and results 

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES 

• Decision Making & Accountability – Balance immediate needs with long-term goals, initiate corrective actions when performance or results fall short. 
• Strategic Thinking - Scan the market, industry, and internal data to identify emerging opportunities or risks, adjusts medium-term plans accordingly. 
• People Development – Design or facilitate learning experiences, mentors team members to prepare them for greater responsibilities.  
• Conflict Management – Resolve disputes involving multiple people or shifting priorities, keep discussions focused on solutions, and ensure agreements are documented. 
• Managing Self – Juggle multiples projects or responsibilities while meeting deadlines, seek feedback when facing challenges and adjust behavior to improve results. 
• Learning Agility – Seek challenging tasks outside current expertise, apply lessons from past successes or mistakes to new projects, modify work methods to suit customers, teams, or situations. 

YOUR TALENT  

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Industrial Engineering or any related field 
• At least 5 to 7 years of relevant experience in production planning, supply chain, purchasing or related with at least 2 years in a supervisory role. 
• Strong experience in production planning, scheduling, supplier coordination, and order fulfillment 
• Experience managing production timelines  
• Strong understanding of lead times, production capacity, purchase order, shipment planning, and supplier performance management 
• Experience handling international customer orders and export requirements  
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to identify production risks, bottlenecks and schedule deviations. 
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, with the ability to analyze production data, build monitoring tools, and track operational KPIs.  
• Experience using ERP, supply chain, production planning, or inventory management systems is preferred.  
• Strong project management and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple product categories, suppliers, and competing deadlines.