Director Strategic Planning

The Opportunity:

An excellent career opportunity awaits as the Director, Strategic Planning of USALCO’s business, which is headquartered in Baltimore, MD. This position will report to the Chief Operating Officer and will be responsible for developing an S&OP framework to deliver the organizational financial commitments. This position will also engage with the leadership team to provide end to end support for the business. This position is a key member of the Leadership team and will actively engage to develop and drive USALCO’s long term Strategies and Annual Operating Plans.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

This is a key position within USALCO and is responsible for leading the development of a holistic demand/supply balance and optimization of global network. The successful candidate must demonstrate strong partnership with Business, Technology and Manufacturing leadership to balance the flow of materials and measure the company’s performance verse the plan. The successful candidate will develop and lead the S&OP process.

The Senior Manager of Sales, Inventory, and Operations Planning (SIOP) is a key enterprise leadership position, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer. We are seeking a highly analytical and experienced SIOP/S&OP/IBP leader who can lead the organization in delivering world class product availability and working capital management. This role will be tasked with developing, implementing, and overseeing a best-in-class SIOP process which serves as the framework for highlighting and resolving gaps between financial and operational plans through timely strategic and tactical decision making.

Responsibilities:

This position will provide the thought leadership and direction for ensuring USALCO achieves exceptional capability in facilitating the prediction & alignment of business plans, customer demand & supply capabilities to meet that demand across the organization. This position plays a key role by owning the monthly S&OP cycle and providing senior leadership with the best information needed to delivery on financial commitments.

• Overall administration of scheduling all S&OP meetings and preparing the documentation.
• Facilitate each S&OP meeting to ensure that they stay focused on the horizon and not get lost in detail.
• The role will lead and facilitate a monthly business review (MBR), to the executive leadership team.
• The position will ensure that the demand-supply balances are reviewed, gaps or opportunities are presented for action, and cost and service are optimized.
• This role will work with senior leaders from Sales, Finance, Supply Chain, Operations and Marketing teams to ensure understanding & compliance with the S&OP process so that the S&OP Cycle is delivering the highest quality outputs.
• This role will be responsible for process development and thought leadership, as these processes are not fully developed and therefore have not reached a high level of maturity in the organization.
• This position will also work cross functionally with Procurement, Sales & Supply Chain leadership to ensure the organization maintains a rolling 18-month outlook.
• Development of a customer demand planning capabilities and provide thought leadership for S&OP deployment.
• Lead the supply chain team in the development, selection, and deployment of S&OP tools that are used to support USALCO’s business goals.
• Ensure S&OP, demand & supply management practices are in accordance with corporate ethics, financial instructions and internal control requirements and result in providing the requisite quality and reliability.
• Lead the monthly Sales, Inventory, and Operations Planning (SIOP) process in delivering a predictable, reliable cross-functionally integrated Plan that aligns with the company’s objectives with a focus on balancing demand and supply, optimizing inventory, and maximizing customer fill rates.
  • Develop, maintain, and utilize a Balanced Scorecard of KPIs to align performance with financial, operational, and strategic objectives.
  • Enhance reporting for monthly/quarterly/annual reviews and drive story telling with data.
  • Leverage analytics to provide timely data insights and recommendations to stakeholders throughout various areas of the organization.
• Work closely with the Supply Chain partners to ensure sufficient capacity exists in the supply and distribution networks.
• Set and maintain inventory targets. Monitor and maintain visibility to inventory health, evaluating performance, and proactively driving attention and marshalling required resources to develop and execute action plans to resolve issues.
• Embed structure, discipline, and continuous improvement into the SIOP process to enable robust, efficient action planning and decision making. Monitor functional group adherence to SIOP procedures, roles and responsibilities, and timelines.
• Oversee monthly SIOP process including scheduling meetings, coordinating content input, and preparing the Executive SIOP meeting deck, capturing action items, and issuing meeting minutes.
• Synthesize large amounts of data, decompose complex problems, and communicate across various levels of the organization using a variety of communication techniques including data visualization.
• Formulate and develop a strategic roadmap to mature the SIOP function and process.
• Be a change agent by continuously identifying, assessing, and leveraging process, technology, and capability enhancements.
• Oversee lifecycle planning (new production introduction (NPI) and end-of-life activities).

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Operations Research, Mathematics, Engineering, or Business Management (Master’s degree preferred)
• 5+ years of strategic and in-depth, hands-on planning and operations experience
• 3-5 years+ Experience in Sales & Operations Planning, with leadership over one or more elements of the overall process strongly preferred
• Exceptional communication, interpersonal and presentation skills.
• Ability to work in detail where required but also to elevate, understand and manage within the ‘bigger picture’
• Demonstrate influencing skills to reach consensus, buy-in and commitment from internal and external partners
• Able to manage with ambiguity and autonomy
• Demonstrated capability to lead and develop planning talent
• Exceptional ability to effectively communicate, build collaborative relationships and influence change without direct authority across business units and support functions at all levels (e.g., senior leaders and individual contributors) in a large matrix organization
• Experience implementing and leading a SIOP/S&OP/IBP process with a proven track record of achieving financial, service, and operational performance targets
• Strong E2E Business / Supply Chain Understanding; understands tradeoffs of balancing revenue, margin, and inventory to achieve sustainable, profitable growth
• Excel at simplifying complex operational issues and turning data into actionable insights using data visualization
• Influencing & relationship building skills to drive action with appropriate urgency across critical cross-functional partnerships
• Strong business, operational, financial and root cause acumen with a corrective action mindset
• Knowledge and experience using ERP (Ross Aptean preferred) and planning systems required, implementation experience a plus
• Exceptional ability to think creatively, generate options, build consensus, and execute
• Strong project leadership, strategy development, process design, and change management skills
• Passion for driving continuous improvement; mature existing processes, systems, etc.
• Lead and solve complex organizational problems with a focus on continuous improvement
• Strong interpersonal skills with an ability to collaborate and communicate effectively both cross-functionally and with executive leadership, senior management, peers, and team members

Preferred:

• Master’s degree in chemical engineering, related discipline and/or MBA preferred.
• Skilled in influencing cultural change and problem resolution
• Assessing, Identifying and resolve root causes of problems and inconsistencies.
• Solid analytical and computer skills
• Strong communication skills
• Outstanding team building and leadership skills.
• Strong leadership and decision-making skills.
• Strong interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills.
• Ability to challenge status quo, identify key areas for improvement and implement actions to address.
• Previous SIOP/S&OP/IBP experience in a specialty chemical, heavy industry, intensive asset environment with significant processing equipment and material handling, or equivalent.

Year One Critical Success Factors:

• Develop and implementation of an SIOP process from scratch.
• Create Monthly Cadence for critical reviews, meetings, and updates to Leadership.
• Meet with key internal customers to understand the as is state and opportunities for improvement.
• Assess the organization’s skills, capabilities, and gaps.
• Identify gaps/issues between existing demand/supply plans and execute corrective actions to implement.
• Develop a results-driven organizational culture with improved accountability on delivering results to the customer (internal).

Compensation:

A highly competitive compensation program will be provided to the successful candidate including base salary, performance-based incentive bonus and additional benefits.

USALCO is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. As a general policy, USALCO does not offer employment visa sponsorships upon hire or in the future.