Production Scheduler

• Location 1079 American Way,Verona, WI, 53593,United States

Wisconsin Brewing Company | Verona, Wisconsin

Reports To:

Operations Leader | Full-Time, On-Site

Wisconsin Brewing Company (WBC) is seeking a highly organized, proactive Production Scheduler to own the development and execution of our production schedule across a complex beverage manufacturing environment.

WBC operates as both a beverage brand owner and contract manufacturer, producing beer, non-alcoholic beverages, ready-to-drink beverages, and other beverage products for a diverse group of customers. The Production Scheduler plays a critical role in converting customer demand into an efficient, realistic, and executable production plan.

This position will take the operational hand-off from Business Development as new co-pack customers move toward commercialization and will work directly with both new and existing customers to understand production requirements, forecasts, timing, and priorities.

The Production Scheduler will coordinate closely with Procurement, Inventory, Warehouse, Brewing/Blending, Quality, Packaging, Maintenance, and Operations leadership to ensure that customer demand is translated into a production schedule that maximizes throughput, minimizes changeovers and downtime, and delivers against customer commitments.

This is not simply a schedule-maintenance position. The successful candidate will own the production schedule and drive the cross-functional communication and accountability necessary to execute it.

• Take the operational hand-off from Business Development as new customers transition from sales opportunity to commercialization and production.
• Serve as a key operational contact for co-pack customers regarding production planning and scheduling.
• Work directly with customers to understand forecasts, purchase orders, requested production dates, SKU requirements, volumes, packaging formats, and future production needs.
• Establish clear timelines and requirements for new product launches and initial production runs.
• Proactively communicate scheduling constraints, changes, risks, and production timing to customers.
• Maintain visibility to expected customer demand beyond confirmed purchase orders whenever possible.
• Identify changes in customer demand early and translate those changes into implications for production capacity and material requirements.

• Own and maintain WBC's master production schedule.
• Convert customer demand, forecasts, purchase orders, and internal brand requirements into a realistic production plan.
• Schedule brewing, blending, packaging, and related manufacturing activities in coordination with Operations.
• Optimize production sequencing to improve throughput and reduce unnecessary product, package, flavor, allergen, format, and equipment changeovers.
• Balance customer priorities with available capacity, labor, tank availability, packaging line capabilities, material availability, quality requirements, and maintenance needs.
• Maintain appropriate scheduling horizons, including detailed near-term schedules and forward-looking capacity planning.
• Continuously evaluate actual production performance against the schedule and adjust future schedules accordingly.
• Identify capacity constraints before they become customer-service problems.
• Escalate conflicts and capacity issues quickly, with recommended solutions rather than simply identifying problems.

• Provide Procurement with timely and accurate visibility to future production requirements.
• Translate the production schedule into material requirements and required-by dates.
• Work with Procurement, Inventory, and Staging to confirm that ingredients, packaging materials, labels, cans, ends, cartons, trays, and other required materials will be available before production is scheduled.
• Identify material shortages or risks early enough to allow corrective action.
• Avoid scheduling production that cannot realistically be executed because required materials, approvals, or specifications are unavailable.
• Participate in ongoing improvement of demand planning, inventory planning, and material requirements processes.
• Coordinate with Business Development, Quality, Procurement, Brewing/Blending, Packaging, and customers to ensure new products are production-ready.
• Maintain visibility to key commercialization requirements such as specifications, formulas, packaging components, artwork,…