Material Planner Manager

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop the Material Planning team.
• Ensure timely availability of purchased and intercompany materials to support customer demand and production schedules.
• Manage supplier schedules, releases, confirmations, and material forecasts in alignment with MRP requirements.
• Monitor shortages, past-due supplier deliveries, inventory risks, and production-impacting material constraints.
• Coordinate daily with Customer Service, Production, Purchasing, Logistics, Warehouse, Quality, and Suppliers.
• Translate customer demand and production requirements into reliable material plans and supplier priorities.
• Lead shortage meetings, escalation processes, recovery plans, and supplier follow-up actions.
• Optimize inventory levels while protecting production continuity and customer delivery performance.
• Support program launches, engineering changes, phase-in/phase-out activities, and obsolescence control.
• Prepare supply chain KPIs and management reports, including material availability, supplier performance, inventory turns, excess/obsolete inventory, and root-cause actions.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Industrial Engineering, Logistics, Business Administration, or related field.
• Minimum 10 years of automotive industry experience.
• Minimum 5 years in material planning, production planning, supply chain, or supplier scheduling leadership.
• Strong understanding of automotive manufacturing, MRP, inventory control, supplier releases, and production planning.
• ERP experience required; SAP experience strongly preferred.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel and strong data analysis capability.
• Experience managing supplier performance, shortages, delivery escalations, and material recovery plans.
• Strong analytical, organizational, and communication skills with high sense of urgency.
• Fluent English, written and spoken, mandatory.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in automotive mirror manufacturing, assembly operations, plastic components, electronics, harnesses, or similar Tier 1 environment.
• APICS CPIM/CSCP, Lean Manufacturing, or supply chain certification is a plus.
• Experience with JIT, Kanban, min-max planning, supplier scorecards, and premium freight reduction.
• Experience supporting launch, ramp-up, engineering changes, and supply base stabilization.