Demand Planner at Fender

Fender Musical Instrument Corporation (“FMIC”) is located in Scottsdale, AZ. Our brand mission is to accompany each player at every stage with products and brand experiences that fuel the pursuit of musical expression. Within Global Demand Planning, we are focused on delivering operational excellence to the business and our customers by promoting collaboration, building trust, and setting high standards.  Our mission is to support and enable the makers who fuel the pursuit of musical expression.  

An American icon, Fender was born in Southern California and has built a worldwide influence extending beyond the studio and the stage. A Fender is more than an instrument; it’s a cultural symbol that resonates globally.

We are currently seeking a Demand Planner - Americas as a leadership position within Supply Chain. The selected candidate will participate in the consensus process of the Sales, Inventory and Operations Plan (SIOP) and the translation of reduced forecast bias, high fill rates, optimized inventory and efficient manufacturing plans.

Main Responsibilities:

• Manage the forecasting process to drive the conversion of the unit-based forecast into a monthly revenue plan over a 12 to 24-month planning horizon.
• Develop SKU/Channel level forecasts to further support annual revenue objectives.
• Selection and use of statistical models for forecast development.
• Lead the Demand Validation meetings with focus on risk assessment, opportunity identification, and provide specific guidance to critical stakeholders.
• Participate in the Supply Planning meetings by providing insights to forecast changes, forecast accuracy and communication of upcoming risk and opportunities that can impact the supply plan and inventory.
• Partner with Sales, Marketing, Supply and Finance to ensure all future programs, promotions, new item launches, and factory special runs are accounted for in the monthly plans.
• Provide input to the overall organization on risks and opportunities related to the forecast and develop alternate forecast scenarios that will lead to risk mitigation analyses.
• Develop and communicate gap plans for misses to sales forecast/budget.
• Communicate and manage supply issues to develop alternative plans where delivery schedules cannot be met.
• Monitor, analyze and prepare key performance reports to include (but not limited to) inventory, forecast accuracy, MAPE, fill rate, slow moving, excess and obsolete inventory and new product introduction.
• Monitor trends in customer orders (by create date and request date) against forecast and identify forecast improvements.
• Prepare, maintain, and publish new item/factory special run sell thru reports to monitor and assess performance and trend.
• Develop tools/processes to aid in data analysis and to understand and optimise/improve processes; make recommendations for changes
• Management of SKU status in SAP (working with Master Data team).

 What you Need:

• Bachelor's Degree in Supply Chain, Business, Operations or Finance.
• 2-4 years of experience in planning, demand forecasting, inventory management or financial planning and analysis.
• Strong leadership, analytical, problem-solving and organizational skills.
• Decision maker, ability to lead and communicate cross functionally throughout all levels of the organization.
• Ability to influence and appropriately challenge key stakeholders. 
• Proven ability to rapidly synthesize limited data and large quantities of data to effectively spot trends and shifts.
• Knowledge of shipment demand drivers (base consumption, incremental consumption, trade inventory and life cycle planning).
• Strong communication and presentation skills: concisely present complex information/recommendations in terms meaningful to various audiences. 
• Experience managing large SKU base across multiple distribution centers. 
• Advanced MS Excel skills required. 
• Knowledge of SAP R/3, Tableau, Logility and/or SAP Business Warehouse; with advanced data mining skills preferred.