Senior Expert, Manufacturing SC process Design and Transformation (all genders)

Merck; Eysins; On-site; CHF 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Merck is seeking a seasoned production planning specialist to strengthen healthcare manufacturing planning across global sites. You will improve planning processes, enable data-driven decisions, and lead complex scheduling initiatives using SAP APO PP/DS and related data analytics.

Collaboration across procurement, quality, IT and manufacturing will be essential. The role emphasizes cross-site planning excellence, change management, and training to ensure sustainable improvements in a regulated

Qualifications

• Several years of experience in supply chain planning, production planning and scheduling in regulated manufacturing.
• Strong hands-on experience with SAP APO PP/DS or SAP E-PPDS, including planning and scheduling processes.
• Experience designing, improving, or deploying planning processes across multiple sites, preferably global.

Responsibilities

• Translate strategic goals into robust production planning processes across sites.
• Define functional concepts and support transformation initiatives in SAP planning solutions.
• Develop training and knowledge sharing to promote planning excellence in Healthcare.

Skills

SAP APO PP/DS

Production planning

Scheduling principles

Data analytics

Stakeholder communication

S/4HANA master data

Tools

SAP E-PPDS

Job description

Work Your Magic with us!

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you've got big plans - so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people's lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

This role may also be based at our headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany.

Your role

Join a global Center of Excellence that strengthens production planning and detailed scheduling across a network of Healthcare manufacturing sites. In this role, you will help deliver reliable healthcare supply by improving planning processes, enabling data-driven decisions, and raising planning capabilities across the organization. As a process and solution expert, you will translate strategic business goals into robust production planning processes using your supply chain expertise, process design skills, analytics capabilities, and SAP APO PP/DS knowledge. You will provide functional leadership for complex incidents, recurring process issues, and cross-site improvement initiatives, acting as the final level of support for challenging production-planning topics. You will design and deploy planning processes, assess business requirements, define functional concepts, and support transformation initiatives involving existing planning solutions and future SAP E-PPDS capabilities. You will help ensure that processes, master data, and planning models accurately reflect pharmaceutical manufacturing constraints, including quality, materials, capacity, campaigns, sequencing, and shelf life. By defining meaningful performance indicators and using data to identify bottlenecks and recurring deviations, you will turn insights into sustainable improvements rather than manual workarounds. You will contribute to test strategies, acceptance criteria, cutover and release plans, post-deployment stabilization, and the successful adoption of new ways of working at site level. You will also develop training, coaching, and knowledge-sharing initiatives that promote common standards and planning excellence across the Healthcare supply chain community. If you enjoy working at the intersection of business processes, technology, analytics, and people development-and can move confidently from strategic direction to hands-on problem solving-this is an opportunity to shape planning excellence at global scale.

Who you are

• Several years of experience in supply chain planning, production planning and scheduling, or a closely related field, ideally gained in pharmaceutical, life sciences, chemicals, or another highly regulated and complex manufacturing environment.
• Strong hands-on experience with SAP APO PP/DS or SAP E-PPDS, including planning and scheduling processes, solution capabilities, functional troubleshooting, and relevant SAP S/4HANA and master-data dependencies.
• Proven experience designing, improving, or deploying planning processes across multiple manufacturing sites, preferably in a global program, Center of Excellence, template organization, or matrix structure.
• Strong understanding of production planning and detailed scheduling principles, including the ability to model operationally meaningful and technically robust manufacturing constraints.
• Experience working with supply chain data, analytics, dashboards, and performance indicators to identify root causes and drive measurable process improvement.
• Ability to understand stakeholder needs, evaluate functional designs, challenge assumptions, and explain technical implications in clear, actionable language to non-technical audiences.
• Structured, pragmatic, and systemic problem solver who can combine strategic thinking with effective operational execution, manage multiple priorities, and influence without relying on formal authority.
• Confident facilitator and collaborative communicator who works effectively across planning, production, procurement, quality, warehousing, IT, and other interfaces in an international, multicultural, and virtual environment; fluent in English, with additional languages an advantage.

What we offer:

We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!