Strategic Production Planner & Scheduling Lead

Nexthermal; Battle Creek (MI); On-site; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Nexthermal in Battle Creek, MI seeks a Production Scheduler to develop and execute a comprehensive production planning strategy that balances demand, capacity, materials, and workforce resources.

You will partner with Production, Supply Chain, Engineering, Customer Service, and Sales to establish finite-capacity scheduling, level workloads, and drive data-driven execution. The role also includes mentoring planners and leading continuous improvement initiatives across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management or related field.
• 5+ years of production planning, scheduling, or supply chain experience in manufacturing.
• Experience implementing ERP or APS systems.
• Strong understanding of MRP/CRP concepts and ERP tooling.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the business process owner for production planning and scheduling within the ERP system.
• Develop finite-capacity production schedules considering labor, equipment, tooling and materials.
• Establish methodologies aligning demand with available manufacturing resources.
• Analyze work center loading and capacity to identify bottlenecks and improve throughput.
• Lead operations planning to ensure realistic commitments to customers.
• Drive workload leveling and resource balancing across departments.
• Develop planning metrics and dashboards for capacity, throughput, and on-time delivery.
• Create long- and short-term production plans based on forecast demand and capacity.
• Lead ERP implementation and optimization for planning and scheduling.
• Partner with ERP project teams to design, test, and deploy planning functionality.
• Develop workflows, scheduling rules, capacity models, and planning parameters.
• Ensure routing, work center, labor standards, and capacity data are maintained.
• Train users and champion adoption of planning best practices.
• Drive improvements in schedule accuracy and labor utilization.
• Mentor production supervisors, planners, and schedulers.
• Promote data-driven decision-making and schedule accountability.

Skills

Production planning

Scheduling

Capacity planning

Lean manufacturing

Theory of Constraints

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management or related field

Tools

ERP systems

APS systems

MRP/CRP concepts

Job description

Nexthermal in Battle Creek, MI seeks a Production Scheduler to develop and execute a comprehensive production planning strategy that balances demand, capacity, materials, and workforce resources.

You will partner with Production, Supply Chain, Engineering, Customer Service, and Sales to establish finite-capacity scheduling, level workloads, and drive data-driven execution. The role also includes mentoring planners and leading continuous improvement initiatives across the organization.