Senior Planning Analyst – Inventory Planning & Stocking Strategy

Senior Planning Analyst

For over 50 years, Banner Engineering has been at the forefront of industrial automation. We offer products and solutions including award-winning sensors, wireless solutions, machine safety, indication and LED lighting. From Fortune 500 leaders to innovative startups, Banner's award-winning products and solutions are helping companies around the world increase efficiency, reduce costs, safeguard equipment, and protect personnel. Our commitment to innovation shows through a continuous, market-driven evolution of products and technology.

With engineers employed in nearly every major department, engineering is in our DNA.

Banner is a rapidly growing company that offers many personal development opportunities, an excellent benefits package, and a collaborative team of employees who are passionate about what they do.

The Senior Planning Analyst will play a critical role in advancing Banner's inventory planning capability and stocking program strategy. This role will support and drive the processes, analytics, and cross-functional decision-making needed to improve in-stock levels at Banner and across distributor channels while balancing customer service, working capital, operational constraints, and product lifecycle priorities.

The position will partner closely with Operations, Commercial, Product Management, Supply Chain, and regional teams to translate demand signals, stocking policies, service-level expectations, and product-family strategies into actionable inventory plans. The role will help define which products should be stocked, where inventory should be positioned, how stocking levels should be maintained, and how exceptions should be surfaced for decision-making.

This position reports to Demand Planning Manager.

This role requires working onsite at our Brooklyn Park, MN office five days a week.

This is a great opportunity for someone who enjoys working collaboratively and individually, staying on top of tasks, and making a meaningful impact across teams and projects. Below are some key responsibilities of the role.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the development and execution of Banner's stocking program strategy, including P/S/N stocking recommendations, min/max logic, demand segmentation, and service-level targets.
• Analyze inventory availability, forecast inputs, demand behavior, backlog, open sales orders, lead times, and distributor requirements to identify gaps in in-stock performance.
• Partner with Product Management and Commercial teams to align stocking decisions with product-family strategy, lifecycle stage, customer promise, distributor expectations, and revenue priorities.
• Work with Operations and Supply Chain teams to translate stocking strategy into executable replenishment, production, and material plans.
• Develop reporting and dashboards to monitor in-stock levels, inventory health, service levels, forecast quality, slow-moving inventory, excess exposure, and stocking-policy effectiveness.
• Identify root causes of stockouts, inventory imbalances, past-due backlog, slow-moving inventory, and unmanaged stocking drift; recommend corrective actions and process improvements.
• Support monthly forecast and inventory reviews, product-family health reviews, and cross-functional stocking governance forums.
• Evaluate demand patterns using segmentation methods such as ABC/XYZ, runners/repeaters/strangers, lifecycle stage, customer concentration, and revenue contribution.
• Recommend stocking policy updates, safety stock assumptions, replenishment parameters, and exception-handling rules based on data, business priorities, and operational feasibility.
• Coordinate with distributor-facing and regional teams to understand channel inventory needs, availability gaps, lead-time expectations, and communication requirements.
• Help build standard work, planning tools, and repeatable processes that improve inventory decision quality and reduce reliance on ad hoc analysis.
• Escalate material stocking risks, service-level tradeoffs, or inventory exposure issues with clear options, financial impact, and recommended next steps.

What You Bring to the Table

To perform this job successfully, you must be able…