Demand & Supply Planning Manager

Want to help us bring happiness to the world? Want to join an ambitious and fast-growing global biscuits and confectionery business investing heavily in iconic global brands, infrastructure, and people? Then this is the place for you.

As proud bakers and chocolatiers and custodians of iconic global brands, we don’t compromise on the quality of ingredients in our products or on the people we hire. We are looking for entrepreneurial spirits who share our passion for bringing happiness to our consumers and who embody our Winning Traits.

To succeed at pladis you need to be purpose-led, resilient and positive to succeed here because we expect pace and agility, we insist on collaboration and demand accountability. If that is your thing, then pladis offers global ambition, a clear Vision and roadmap for success, challenge, and unrivalled opportunities to learn and make an impact.

The Challenge

We are looking for a Demand Supply Chain Manager, with a big passion for demand planning and biscuits. We offer you the opportunity to join our team and contribute to our mission to bring ‘Happiness with every bite’.

The position entails

Verkade has the ambition to grow the business and provide the best-in-class service levels for its customers. It is in this context that we are looking for a Demand and Supply Planning Manager. The Demand & Supply Manager will be reporting to Head of Customer Services & Logistics and will be managing 1 FTE. He/she will be a key contributor to the Sales & Operations process.

Your main responsibilities

• Demand Planning: Forecasting customers’ demand to ensure that the right amount of product is produced and available at the right time. This involves analysing historical sales data, market trends, and promotional activities together with Marketing and Trade Marketing. Contributing to New Product Development and discontinuation processes. Working with Sales, Marketing, Trade Marketing to facilitate smooth new product introductions, 0 obsolete and scrap costs.
• Supply Chain Coordination: Working closely with suppliers, manufacturers, and logistics providers to ensure a smooth flow of goods from production to the consumer shelf. This includes managing inventory levels and production planning.
• Demand & supply reconciliation addresses potential issues through KPIs and comes with alternatives/ actions to avoid or mitigate the risk.
• Inventory Management: Balancing the need to have enough stock to meet demand without overstocking (which can lead to increased costs and waste). This involves setting up inventory policy and monitoring stock levels. Analyzing obsolete root cause to reduce the risks.
• Promotional Planning: Together with marketing and sales teams, plan and execute promotions. This includes forecasting the impact of promotions on demand and ensuring that sufficient stock is available to meet the increased demand.
• Data Analysis and Reporting: Using data to monitor performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. This includes generating reports on sales, inventory levels, and supply chain performance.
• Continuous Improvement: Identifying opportunities to improve processes and systems to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This can involve implementing new technologies (forecasting tool), optimizing supply chain processes, and improving forecasting accuracy.
• Manage Demand & Supply Planning planner in his decision-making processes, develop his competencies and personal development plans, as well as drive and manage his performance to objective.

What do you bring?

You are a team player and know how to inspire people to act and perform. You will have a mindset to drive performance and create a high performing team. You have affinity with brands, food and have commercial awareness. People describe you as resilient and a hands-on manager who drive the decision-making process. You like to build on strong interpersonal and influencing skills to gather commercial, manufacturing, customer Service and logistics managers into resolution of demand & supply planning issues. You like to drive for standardization and simplification, and you have:

• Pragmatic, solutions oriented and pro-active skills.
• Strong communication skills and able to build good collaboration with Sales, Marketing, Supply chain, Finance teams.
• Positive and energetic, Strong analytical skills, structured.

Must haves

• Graduate from university, with a minimum of 5 years’ experience in FMCG.
• Business understanding.
• Strong communication skills and ability to develop senior management recommendations.
• Excellent knowledge of planning systems (ie: FuturMaster).
• Project Management skills.
• Languages fluent spoken & written: English & Dutch mandatory.
• Experienced in people management.

What we offer

Working for pladis means challenging jobs, career opportunities and an inspiring environment that allow you to enhance your personal development. pladis recognizes that the on-going success of the company depends on the continued development and engagement of our employees and pursues a fair and competitive remuneration policy, recognizing individual and team competencies and performance.

A few of our benefits:

• Fixed term employment (12 months) with possibility of a permanent contract.
• Development opportunities through our pladis Academy & other training programs.
• A competitive salary.
• Fulltime employment (37,5 hours per week).
• 34 holidays (based on fulltime).
• Pension in pensionfund ‘Zoetwaren’.
• Discounts on health insurance, gym memberships, bikes etc.
• Biscuits, chocolate and other snacks from our personnel store.
• The best colleagues in an informal working environment.

Who are we?

Koninklijke Verkade, founded in 1886, with amazing brands like Verkade and Sultana, is part of pladis since 2016. pladis is one of the world's leading snacking companies. We are the proud steward of over 300 years of family baking and confectionery experience. A worldwide community with 16,000 colleagues around the world. Each of us bring our experience in happiness. Each of us is unique, but we find each other as a family of bakers and chocolatiers, hardworking, with pride and purpose. After all these years we believe that biscuits and chocolate bring people together. We are pladis. We bake Happiness. Happiness with every bite.

pladis succeeds because of people like you. People who wake up in the morning excited to get to work. Who believe in themselves and their potential. Who want to grow as part of a global community of like-minded colleagues.

pladis colleagues care deeply about being the best. About winning, staying the course and never giving up. Whichever part of the world we’re in, whatever our role. Whether we’re baking, working in HR, finance, marketing or many other areas – we win as one pladis team.

And while we’re all unique, we share something in common. It’s the code by which we live and work. We call it our ‘Winning Traits & Behaviours’: Purpose Led, Agile, Collaborative, Positive and Resilient. Five aspects of pladis life that define who we are, how we interact and get things done.

If pladis sounds like the place where you can thrive and help write the next chapter in our growth story, then check out opportunities around the world and follow us for the latest information from our teams.

Diversity and inclusion is central to everything we do and is reflected across our business. pladis brings together brands and people from around the globe – and this diversity is our great strength.

We’re an equal opportunities employer and believe in encouraging an inclusive environment where we celebrate diversity of thinking and respect everyone’s distinctive qualities and perspectives.

pladis is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to hiring a diverse workforce. All openings will be filled based on qualifications without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability, age, religion or any other classification protected by law.

About Us

pladis is one of the world’s fastest growing snacking companies and home to much loved brands including McVitie’s, GODIVA and Ülker. pladis also owns regional brands Jacob’s, Go Ahead, Flipz, Turtles, BN, Verkade and many more products across sweet and savoury biscuits, wafer, cake and chocolate.

Formed in 2016, pladis is the proud steward of over 300 years of family baking and confectionery experience. The expertise of our 16,000-strong global workforce spans 27 bakeries across 11 countries and is united by our purpose: to ‘bring happiness with every bite’.

As a responsible business delivering the highest quality products and exceptional service, pladis’ products have the potential to reach more than four billion people across the world.