PLANNING MANAGER - JOB #1135

Enstrom Helicopter Corporation; Menominee (MI); On-site; USD 90,000 - 135,000; Full time

Job summary

The Planning Manager at Enstrom Helicopter Corporation will oversee production planning and control, translating demand into actionable schedules and material plans. You will collaborate with Production, Purchasing, Engineering, Aftermarket/Sales, Quality, and Finance to ensure alignment with the operating plan and drive proactive planning actions.

You will advance planning from transactional tasks to data-driven decision support, establishing visibility of future demand, inventory needs, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
• Experience with MRP and planning systems.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration and communication.
• Proficiency in Excel; exposure to BI tools preferred.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain time-phased production plans and schedules.
• Translate demand into actionable production requirements in the MRP system.
• Coordinate priorities across departments to support the operating plan.
• Identify capacity, material, and schedule constraints and propose solutions.
• Provide data-driven recommendations and timely information for decisions.

Skills

Analytical thinking

Cross-functional collaboration

Problem solving

Data-driven decision making

Excel proficiency

MRP knowledge

Planning & scheduling

Education

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management

CPIM certification (preferred)

Tools

MRP systems

Excel

Power BI

Job description

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Position:PLANNING MANAGER - JOB #1135

Location: Menominee, MI

Remote Status: On-Site

Job Id:1150

# of Openings:1

PLANNING MANAGER- JOB #1135

Reports To:Director of Value Stream
Location:Menominee, Michigan
Status:Full-time, On-site, Salary, Exempt

POSITION SUMMARY

The Planning Manager is responsible for managing the company's production planning and control processes and translating business demand into informed and executable production, material, inventory, and capacity plans.

The Planning Manager provides the operational link between demand requirements and manufacturing execution by maintaining planning discipline within the MRP system, evaluating material and capacity requirements, coordinating production priorities, and identifying constraints that could affect the company's ability to execute its operating plan. This position works closely with Production, Purchasing, Engineering, Aftermarket/Sales, Quality, and Finance to ensure that planning assumptions, priorities, material requirements, and production schedules remain aligned. The Planning Manager is expected to identify emerging problems before they affect production, use data to develop recommended actions, and provide management with accurate and timely information for operational decision-making.

The Planning Manager is expected to advance the Planning function from primarily transactional scheduling, expediting, and near-term issue resolution toward proactive, data-driven planning and operational decision support. The position is responsible for establishing visibility of future demand, material requirements, inventory needs, manufacturing workload, and capacity constraints sufficiently in advance to allow the organization to take effective corrective action. The Planning Manager is expected to establish planning discipline in which production priorities and resource decisions are driven by an integrated operating plan rather than isolated departmental priorities or recurring reactive intervention. Success in this position is measured not only by the ability to resolve current planning problems, but increasingly by the ability to anticipate and prevent them.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Production Planning & Scheduling

• Develop, maintain, and coordinate the company's time-phased production plans and schedules based on approved demand, customer requirements, backlog, inventory requirements, and production priorities.
• Translate approved demand into actionable production requirements within the MRP system.
• Coordinate production priorities across manufacturing departments and ensure released work supports the approved operating plan.
• Evaluate schedule feasibility based on material availability, labor requirements, production capacity, and known constraints.
• Identify potential schedule conflicts and recommend corrective actions before they affect customer or production requirements.
• Monitor planned versus actual production performance and investigate significant deviations.
• Maintain planning visibility across appropriate short-, intermediate-, and long-range planning horizons, ensuring near-term execution decisions remain aligned with future production, material, inventory, and capacity requirements.
• Maintain the approved production plan as the operational plan of record and ensure changes to priorities, schedules, or requirements are appropriately evaluated, communicated, and incorporated.
• Maintain effective planning practices within the company's MRP system.
• Review MRP recommendations, planned orders, work orders, forecasts, pegged demand, inventory requirements, and exception conditions.
• Ensure planning parameters and assumptions are appropriately maintained and periodically reviewed.
• Identify data or process conditions that create inaccurate, unnecessary, or conflicting MRP signals.
• Coordinate correction of planning-data issues with the appropriate functional owners.
• Establish consistent planning practices for interpreting and acting upon MRP outputs.
• Establish controls for the periodic review of planning-critical master data, including lead times, order policies, safety stock, lot-sizing parameters, planning horizons, forecasts, routings, and other parameters affecting MRP outputs.
• Reconcile MRP-generated requirements with actual material, production, capacity, and configuration conditions and ensure significant discrepancies are identified, understood, and resolved.

Material Requirements & Shortage Management

• Translate production requirements into time-phased material requirements.
• Work closely with Purchasing to identify material shortages, supplier constraints, and required procurement actions.
• Evaluate material availability against production priorities and identify requirements that place the operating plan at risk.
• Establish and manage shortage prioritization and escalation based on production impact, customer requirements, and the approved operating plan.
• Ensure production schedules reflect realistic material availability rather than theoretical demand alone.
• Provide Purchasing and Production with forward-looking visibility of significant material requirements and constraints.

Capacity Planning

• Develop and maintain visibility of forecasted production workload compared with available manufacturing capacity.
• Evaluate labor-hour and departmental capacity requirements over appropriate planning horizons.
• Identify anticipated capacity constraints, excess capacity, and workload imbalances.
• Recommend schedule, sequencing, staffing, outsourcing, or other alternatives for management consideration when significant capacity gaps are identified.
• Analyze production-rate changes and quantify their impact on manufacturing workload.

Inventory Planning

• Execute approved inventory policies and planning strategies.
• Analyze historical consumption, forecast demand, lead time, order quantities, production requirements, and service-level objectives when developing inventory recommendations.
• Maintain and periodically review safety-stock and other inventory-planning parameters.
• Identify inventory shortages, excess inventory, obsolete exposure, and other inventory risks.
• Recommend adjustments to inventory parameters when changes in demand, production volume, lead time, or operating conditions warrant review.
• Monitor the effectiveness of inventory policies against service-level and inventory-investment objectives.

Demand Integration

• Consolidate approved production, aftermarket, customer, forecast, and other recognized demand sources into an integrated planning view.
• Evaluate demand against inventory, material availability, and manufacturing capacity.
• Identify inconsistencies between demand sources and coordinate resolution with the appropriate functional owners.
• Provide feedback regarding forecast performance and significant differences between forecast and actual consumption.
• Support development of planning assumptions used for future production and inventory requirements.

S&OP Support

• Prepare and maintain operational planning information required to support the company's Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process.
• Develop demand-versus-supply, capacity, inventory, backlog, shortage, and production-plan analyses for S&OP review.
• Identify significant gaps between business requirements and operational capability.
• Develop scenarios and recommended actions for management consideration.
• Track actions and assumptions resulting from S&OP decisions.
• Ensure approved S&OP decisions are reflected appropriately in production and material planning.

Planning Analytics & Decision Support

• Develop and maintain planning reports, dashboards, and performance indicators.
• Analyze operational data to identify trends, risks, constraints, and opportunities.
• Provide management with concise analysis explaining significant deviations from plan and recommended corrective actions.
• Support scenario analysis involving production-rate changes, inventory requirements, capacity constraints, material availability, and changes in demand.
• Provide leadership, direction, priorities, and technical guidance to planners, schedulers, and other assigned Planning & Control personnel.
• Establish clear expectations for planning accuracy, responsiveness, analytical quality, and follow-through.
• Develop the planning capabilities of assigned personnel through coaching, training, and standardized work practices.
• Promote proactive problem identification rather than reactive expediting.
• Establish accountability for maintaining accurate planning information and timely resolution of planning exceptions.
• Foster productive working relationships between Planning & Control and other operating functions.
• Identify opportunities to improve production planning, scheduling, inventory management, MRP utilization, reporting, and planning-data quality.
• Develop and document standardized planning processes and procedures.
• Participate in improvements to information systems, analytical tools, and business processes affecting Planning & Control.
• Support future improvements or implementations involving MRP, ERP, business intelligence, and decision-support capabilities.
• Participate in cross-functional improvement initiatives involving Production, Purchasing, Engineering, Aftermarket, and other functions.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The Planning Manager is accountable for maintaining and improving a balanced set of planning performance measures. Key performance indicators may include

• Production plan and schedule attainment
• Material availability to production schedule
• Shortage exposure and aging
• Forecast accuracy and forecast bias
• Inventory performance
• Planned versus actual manufacturing workload
• Capacity versus forecasted load
• Schedule stability
• Timeliness and effectiveness of constraint identification
• Closure of planning actions and exceptions

QUALIFICATIONS

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Business, Engineering, or a related discipline; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• Approximately 5–10 years of progressive experience in manufacturing planning, production control, supply chain, materials management, or related operations.
• Demonstrated knowledge of MRP principles and manufacturing planning systems.
• Working knowledge of production scheduling, inventory management, bills of material, routings, lead times, work orders, purchasing requirements, and manufacturing capacity.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Strong analytical skills, including proficiency with Microsoft Excel and demonstrated ability to analyze significant quantities of operational data.
• Ability to translate data into clear conclusions and actionable recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively across functional organizations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to prioritize competing requirements in a dynamic manufacturing environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in aerospace, defense, aircraft manufacturing, or another complex low-volume/high-mix manufacturing environment.
• ASCM Certified in Planning and Inventory Management (CPIM) certification.
• Experience supporting or participating in an S&OP process.
• Experience improving or implementing MRP/ERP processes.
• Experience with capacity planning and manufacturing workload analysis.
• Experience with Power BI, SQL, or similar business-intelligence and analytical tools.