Supply Planner

JOB SUMMARY

The Supply Planner will be responsible for translating an approved demand plan (e.g. forecast approved by Sales& Operations Planning process) into a supply plan that ensures continuity of supply to meet that demand. The role requires the ability to know technology terms, understand their functions, and model relationships between technology types.

This role translates demand, given in customer units, to supply in 5-10 deployable units of integrated and tested (L10) electronics hardware. The Supply Planner must be able to disaggregate supply deployable units into 20+ purchasable units, such as servers, components, network components, storage components, cables, power subsystems, etc.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Create a supply plan based on the approved demand plan that meets anticipated demand and responds to variability in demand and supply.
• Present the supply plan for periodic governance with stakeholders and leadership, including well-written reports that include tables and graphs to support the plan.
• Translate demand in customer units into supply deployable units of training hardware.
• Disaggregate supply deployable units into purchasable units.
• Model and initially manage translations and disaggregations in spreadsheets, and work with software developers, contractors, or vendors to configure the models in 3rd party software or purpose-built software.
• Test any software for accuracy per the supply planner’s own models.
• Understand and accurately implement the concept of netting off on-hand inventory and supply in motion from demand plans to differentiate new supply required from existing supply available or in process.
• Initiate additional purchases of new material and seek funding approval for such purchases.
• Exercise creativity and optimization approaches to leverage existing supply for new purposes of higher priority and reuse supply not designated for other purposes to satisfy new demand.
• Apply basic statistics such as average and standard deviation, assuming normal distribution models, to derive a buffer or safety stock quantity that best serves the business considering current supply and demand variability.
• Work with other roles within Supply Chain and vendor base to drive variability (e.g. standard deviation in process) down and cycle time down.
• Understand Little’s Law and its application to discern expected inventory for given throughput and cycle time, as well as inventory targets for expected throughput and desired cycle times.
• Understand re-order point concepts, calculations, and the application of them for all components and all parts of the supply chain they manage.
• Drive root cause and corrective actions to restore inventory to expectations and drive it towards new targets.
• Anticipate history repeating events that lead to changes in supply lead times, such as product life cycles, economic cycles, weather, supply-demand imbalances; also, discern the implications of non-historic events such as natural disasters, armed conflicts, and class-level quality issues.
• Understand various costs that affect supply chain and supply decision tradeoffs—e.g. purchased or capital cost, depreciation schedules, warehousing costs, logistics (normal vs. expedited, sea vs. air), negotiations, overtime charges, obsolescence, accounting write downs.
• Propose recommendations to senior leaders, data center personnel, sales, etc. when tradeoffs need to be made between time to delivery and cost.
• Know the map of material flow for all managed components, the vendors in that flow, and any alternatives to that flow or vendors; be aware of changes to those maps as they occur and implications of those changes to timing of purchase orders and on-time delivery
• Understand the unique states of a product lifecycle including launch/ramp, run-rate, and end of life and properly plan within those unique states to balance assurance of supply with cost.

ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, business administration, or related field. Engineering degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Aerospace, Industrial is a plus
• 7+ years experience in supply planning, inventory management, or related field.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Able to calculate average and standard deviation, to derive insights from points in time and trends.
• Proficient in Microsoft Excel including quickly assimilating data from multiple sources, creating pivots, an reducing time from data to information, information to insights, insights to decisions.
• Strong attention to detail and accuracy in work.
• Experience with ERP or supply chain planning software is a plus.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including creation of diagrams, charts, and tables.
• Ability to work independently and manage multiple priorities in a team environment.

LOCATION

This role is based out of the Bay Area.

COMP & BENEFITS

Competitive compensation and benefits package commensurate with experience.