Lead Category Demand Planner

Job : 9136

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Newell Brands is a leading consumer products company with a portfolio of iconic brands like Graco®, Coleman®, Oster®, Rubbermaid®, Sharpie® and Yankee Candle® - and 24,000 talented teammates around the world. Our culture is built on values in action:
Integrity, Teamwork, Passion for Winning, Ownership, and Leadership. We work together to win, grow, and make a real impact—supported by a high-performing, inclusive, and collaborative environment where you can be your best, every day.

The Lead Category Demand Planner is responsible for Learning and Development demand planning activities by category to deliver the most accurate near and long‑term total forecast as measured by forecast accuracy and attainment. This person is responsible for development and maintenance of business process solutions in support of the global demand forecasting business process and various reporting solutions to facilitate demand planning.

This role partners with the broader Supply Chain, Sales, Sales Planning, Brand, GSC, IT and Finance to ensure demand/process alignment at both a tactical and strategic level.

This will be an influential role within the Global Learning and Development Demand Planning organization and will be tasked with managing several Brands, leading innovation, continuous process improvement projects and step‑change performance improvements.

• Ownership of demand planning activities by product category to deliver the most accurate near and long‑term total forecast as measured by forecast accuracy and attainment.

• Develop 2‑3 years long range demand plan for assigned Brands by incorporating Brand strategic expectations along with driving cross functional collaborative processes to deliver aligned long range demand plan.

• Innovation lead for Demand planning and lead cross functional alignment with customer team, supply chain, brand & finance partners.

• Own execution of global Brand cross‑functional collaboration process with brand, finance, supply chain and trade marketing teams to assess, validate and align our strategic demand assumptions.

• Work with the Brand, Sales, Operations, Supply Planning and Finance teams in the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process to assure alignment in between the forecast and financial plans.

• Challenge the sales and marketing assumptions when significant deviations occur between the demand‑based revenue plan and the business plans.

• Identify quantified risks within the demand plan, review gaps with brand & customer teams and develop appropriate countermeasures for resolution.

• Drive continuous improvement for global demand planning processes and tools across regions, by reviewing current processes, ways of working, gaps and tools, to improve and sustain better metrics such as forecast error, bias, etc.

• Drive continuous development and learning activities across regions, upskilling, and coaching and ensuring regional alignment to global approach, to ensure appropriate skillsets and capabilities of planners across regions.

• Managing the forecasting system and reporting tools to deliver optimal modeling of the business and improve planner productivity by maximizing system functionality.

• Drive and embody a culture of change within the L&D demand planning organization to identify and drive step‑change performance improvements

• Partner with statistician and customer teams to drive statistical forecast solution /improvements

• Act as a SAP/IBP business process /reporting tool champion and partner with GSC team to drive improvement and solve system related issues

• Bachelor’s Degree in in Supply Chain Management, Engineering, Operations, Business Management or related technical field

• Minimum 5 years’ experience which includes:

• Experience across multiple aspects of the supply chain with previous roles in forecasting, supply planning and/or inventory management

• Expertise in data acquisition, spreadsheet/database development and analysis

• Worked in a CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) organization or a business‑to‑business supplier organization

• Technical understanding of ERP or bolt‑on forecasting systems (SAP IBP preferred)

• Successf…