Divisional Head of Supply Planning

Divisional Head of Supply Planning x 2 Positions

Location: Hybrid, with regular travel across assigned UK manufacturing sites

Direct reports: Supply Chain Managers within assigned sites

Are you a senior supply planning leader ready to shape planning performance across a fast growing, complex, multi-site chilled food manufacturing network? This is a high-impact opportunity for an experienced supply chain professional who knows how to turn strategy into executable plans, build planning capability across sites, and improve service, resilience, inventory, and operational performance in a fast-moving UK chilled food environment.

As Divisional Head of Supply Planning, you will lead end-to-end planning performance across your assigned division, acting as the senior escalation point for supply, capacity, service, and material availability challenges. You will translate divisional supply chain strategy into clear, practical plans that support customer service, cost efficiency, inventory optimisation, risk management, and operational resilience.

This is a role for someone who thrives in complexity: multiple UK manufacturing sites, fast-paced chilled food lead times, seasonal peaks, live operational decisions, and senior stakeholder expectations. You will lead, coach, and develop a team of site-based Supply Chain Managers, creating a stronger, more consistent planning community across the division.

• Lead divisional supply planning strategy, ensuring plans are aligned to business objectives, customer service requirements, cost efficiency, and operational resilience.
• Own and improve the supply planning element of S&OP and S&OE, driving robust forward planning, clear prioritisation, and proactive risk management.
• Oversee end-to-end planning activity across multiple UK manufacturing sites, including service risk, material availability, capacity constraints, schedule adherence, and supply continuity.
• Act as the senior decision and escalation point for significant planning challenges, balancing commercial priorities with operational reality.
• Lead, coach, and develop four Supply Chain Managers, building capability, engagement, succession, and a high-performing planning culture.
• Drive consistency, standardisation, and continuous improvement across planning processes, governance, meeting cadence, KPIs, and reporting.
• Partner closely with Operations, Logistics, Technical, Procurement, Commercial, NPD, Finance, and Process teams to ensure aligned decisions and effective execution.
• Support the implementation and embedding of advanced planning systems, tools, analytics, and new ways of working.
• Strengthen divisional resilience planning, ensuring robust contingency plans are in place for supply, capacity, service, and seasonal peaks.
• Maintain compliance with food safety, quality, integrity, health, safety, and environmental standards across supply chain processes.

You will bring significant senior supply chain and supply planning experience gained within a complex UK chilled food, FMCG, or food manufacturing environment. Ideally, you will have around 10 years’ experience, including multi-site leadership and direct management of Supply Chain or Planning Managers.

You will be credible at senior level, confident in operational detail, and able to influence across manufacturing, commercial, procurement, logistics, finance, technical, and NPD teams. You will be data-led, commercially aware, and comfortable making decisions where service, stock, capacity, waste, and cost all need to be balanced.

• Strong experience in supply planning, S&OP, S&OE, production planning, materials planning, inventory, and service performance within chilled food or fast-paced manufacturing.
• Proven experience leading planning teams across multiple UK manufacturing sites.
• Experience managing, coaching, and developing Supply Chain Managers or site-based planning leaders.
• Strong understanding of chilled food manufacturing pressures, including short shelf life, service risk, seasonal demand, capacity constraints, and operational volatility.
• Ability to use KPIs, planning data, and analytics to drive…