Regional Demand Planning Specialist

**Job Summary**:
The Regional Demand Planning role is responsible for working collaboratively with the regional/product Commercial organization to understand the market dynamics, participation strategies and resulting demand forecast. This role supports the ongoing maturation of the S&OP processes with the Commercial teams in collaboration with the Regional Demand Manager role and supply planning functions. This role should also participate in the product portfolio strategies with the Commercial team.

Scope: The Regional Demand Planner will be responsible for managing the demand planning processes within the Americas, APAC or EMEA region. The role will interact with the Regional Commercial and Marketing teams, as well as the Supply Planning team and will report into the Regional Demand Manager.

**Qualifications**

**Knowledge, Skills and Abilities**:

- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Good written and oral communication skills.
- Negotiation and influencing skills.
- Ability to work across multiple groups and countries plus broad functional areas to obtain buy-in and support, communicate and provide leadership for implementing capabilities.
- Ability to adapt to a fast and dynamic environment.
- Project management skills.
- Highly adaptable, flexible and willing to accept new ideas, processes and procedures.
- Highly self-motivated, self-directed, and attentive to detail. Quickness of comprehension and aptitude for learning.Additional language skills appropriate to the region are a benefit.

**Work Environment**:

- Normal office environment. Prolonged sitting in front of a computer.
- Exposure to manufacturing environment.Ability to perform light to medium physical work and standing for long periods of time, if required depending on the task.

**Experience**:

- Minimum 3 years of experience within supply chain environment required.
- Some experience working in a global organization and with geographically dispersed colleagues and stakeholders.
- Willing to flex work hours to meet the needs of a global organization.
- Understanding end-to-end supply chain.
- Basic understanding of statistical based demand forecasting.
- Experience in a regulated industry, medical device or similar industry.
- Basic project management skills.Experience in collaborating with stakeholders, for instance supply chain, manufacturing, packaging and distribution operations, and commercial/sales functions.

**Education**:

- Bachelor’s degree required in related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience is required.

**Essential Functions & Accountabilities**:

- Owner of regional product demand forecasts in the planning system which drives the supply planning functions. Works in collaboration with the Marketing teams to understand demand drivers.
- Highlights demand trends, documents key assumptions as well as risks and opportunities.
- Participates with the Commercial / Marketing team in development of the product participation strategies and resulting demand plan.
- Supports demand planning for new product introduction through collaboration with cross-functional teams including but not limited to new product introduction teams, commercial teams, supply planning teams.
- Works with the Marketing teams to understand the regional forecasts and ensures consistency in the demand forecasts. Ensures that the assumptions underlying the forecasts are understood and documented.
- Evaluates key performance indicators for demand actuals vs. plan (Forecast Accuracy, Bias - Lag 0, Lag 1, Lag 2). Contributes to projects to improve regional forecast accuracy and bias.
- Contributes to the Regional S&OP Demand planning processes. Presents monthly output of regional demand process for significant changes in assumptions/demand plan.
- Identifies improvement opportunities across the Global Supply Chain and Commercial forecast generation process.
- Participates in Global Supply Chain continuous improvement initiatives.Involvement at varying levels on systems changes globally impacting demand management (Oracle OneVision, Logility upgrades, Logility rollouts, AdaptLink, COGNOS, o9 and Hyperion etc.)

**Travel**:

- International travel - 20%.
- Domestic travel - 10%