Strategic Planning Lead at Neways

Top of Minds; Eindhoven; On-site; EUR 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Neways is seeking a Supply Chain Excellence Manager to drive continuous improvement across local MPS and S&OP processes in its manufacturing group.

You will harmonize planning, optimize ERP usage, and provide timely insights to the Supply Chain Director to keep pace with market growth. This role demands a proven, cross-site leader with deep experience in manufacturing supply chains.

Qualifications

• Over 15 years of experience in supply chain, planning, or procurement.
• Within a manufacturing environment.
• Strong stakeholder manager across organizational levels.
• Deep knowledge of S&OP, MPS, and ERP systems.

Responsibilities

• Improve local MPS and S&OP across all operating companies.
• Sharpen planning cycles, consolidate tooling, and optimize ERP usage.
• Provide management information to the Supply Chain Director to enable fast decisions.

Skills

Supply chain management

S&OP

MPS

ERP systems

Stakeholder management

Manufacturing experience

Job description

Supply Chain Excellence Manager at Neways

Requirements

• Over 15 years of experience in supply chain, planning, or procurement
• Within a manufacturing environment
• Strong stakeholder manager across organizational levels
• Deep knowledge of S&OP, MPS, and ERP systems

Neways develops and manufactures mission-critical electronics for semiconductor, defense, and mobility customers and is positioned to double its revenue within five years. The MPS and S&OP infrastructure is in place across the group’s operating companies. The Supply Chain Excellence Manager will focus on continuous improvement: optimizing local processes, sharpening consolidation, and ensuring the supply chain performs at the pace the market demands.

About Neways

With over fifty years of experience and strong in-house engineering capability, Neways has built a position as a technological partner for some of the most demanding applications in the industry: microchip production, advanced defense technologies, and electric vehicle charging. The 2,500-plus specialists across multiple countries design, prototype, and scale up highly complex electronics, from advanced modules and assemblies to specialized cables, wiring, and cutting-edge microelectronics solutions.

Since 2021 Neways did substantial investments in its footprint, capacity and capabilities. With semiconductor demand accelerating globally, Neways has set ambitious growth targets for the years ahead. Despite its scale and global footprint, Neways retains a pragmatic, down-to-earth culture. The organization values long-term partnerships, technical depth, and accountability over hierarchy. Teams work closely across functions, often under demanding conditions where reliability and precision matter.

Vacancy: Supply Chain Excellence Manager

Each operating company runs its own MPS and S&OP process, and at group level these are already consolidated. The ambition now is to continuously improve: sharper local planning cycles, optimizing ERP tools, and a consolidated group-level MPS and S&OP that gives the Supply Chain Director the steering information to make faster, better-informed decisions. The Supply Chain Excellence Manager is a new role created to drive exactly that: connecting the operating companies, implementing best practices, and leveraging systems and processes to continuously advance the planning function across the group.

The role has two core workstreams. The first is programmatic: continuously improving the local MPS and S&OP processes across all operating companies. That means strengthening planning, deepening ERP utilization, professionalizing the consolidation tooling, and rolling out best practices group-wide. What defines this Supply Chain Excellence Manager is a relentless drive for improvement, never settling for good enough.

The second is the consolidated group-level MPS and S&OP: challenging the order book each month, flagging capacity constraints early, and providing the Supply Chain Director – to whom the role reports directly – with the management information needed to keep a fast-growing operation on track.

The right candidate has covered serious ground in supply chain: across planning, procurement, and inventory management, with relevant experience in manufacturing to know what a plan means on the shop floor. Driven and entrepreneurial by nature, this person knows how to influence and earn the trust of supply chain managers across the operating companies, also without a direct reporting line. Their ability to convince and challenge rather than impose, backed by deep subject matter expertise, is what ultimately determines how well the entire chain performs.

“A smooth MPS and S&OP is critical in realizing our ambitions, and that starts with someone who connects the processes across our operating companies. You bring the group perspective in, standardize processes, focus on improvements and maintain the rhythm month after month. Get this right, and you will see it in the numbers: faster decisions at the top and a supply chain that keeps pace with the market.” – Toine Verbruggen, Supply Chain Director

A new ERP has just been rolled out, the consolidated S&OP is under active development, and two major market segments, automotive and defense, are growing simultaneously. Whoever steps into this role now will have a direct hand in defining what the S&OP function looks like three years from now, with monthly visibility at board level and the complexity of connecting diverse, independent businesses in a fast‑growing international group.

Interested?

Neways is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.