Location: Hershey, PA
How will you fit in the big picture?The Senior Manager, Demand Planning leads a team responsible for creating a reliable, explainable, and actionable operational demand forecast across assigned portfolios, customers, channels, and planning horizons. The role converts consumer, customer, commercial, and market signals into an item-level demand plan that enables supply, inventory, service, waste, and financial decisions.
This leader is accountable for demand planning excellence, team capability, and cross-functional decision support. The role operates at the intersection of Demand Planning, Supply Planning, Commercial Planning, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Supply Chain, Data Science, and Analytics, and represents Demand Planning in Integrated Business Management and short-term execution forums.
What will you do? Lead the Demand Planning Process - Own the rolling operational demand forecast for the assigned scope, with sufficient detail and horizon to support production, deployment, inventory, capacity, and customer execution decisions.
- Ensure the forecast appropriately reflects baseline demand, causal factors, customer programs, promotions, seasons, tentpoles, innovation, distribution changes, pricing, portfolio transitions, and item exits.
- Establish clear planning assumptions, decision rights, calendar discipline, and exception thresholds. Ensure material changes are documented, explainable, and communicated to downstream partners.
- Balance forecast responsiveness with stability, focusing planner effort on value-added exceptions rather than routine manual touches.
Improve Forecast Performance and Business Outcomes - Lead performance management across forecast accuracy, WMAPE, bias, forecast value added, stability, and adoption of the approved demand plan.
- Connect forecast performance to retail trends, service, inventory, waste, obsolescence, transportation, capacity, and financial outcomes.
- Diagnose systemic and event-level forecast misses, identify root causes, and convert insights into corrective actions with clear owners and follow-through.
- Use segmentation and differentiated planning approaches to match the planning method and level of effort to demand pattern, customer importance, volatility, and business risk.
Enable Integrated Decision-Making - Represent Demand Planning in Integrated Business Management, S&OP, S&OE, seasonal, innovation, customer, and risk-management forums as applicable.
- Frame risks, opportunities, scenarios, and trade-offs so leaders can make timely decisions based on an aligned view of demand, supply, and financial implications.
- Partner with Customer Planning & Commercial Planning to reconcile the operational forecast with consensus and sales plans while maintaining clarity on assumptions, gaps, and ownership.
- Create constructive tension in planning discussions by challenging unsupported optimism, conservatism, duplication, and unexamined assumptions.
Cont.Strengthen Customer and Cross-Functional Collaboration - Build strong partnerships with Supply Planning, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Supply Chain, Commercial Planning, Analytics, and Data Science.
- Ensure customer and market intelligence is translated into usable forecast inputs at the right timing, level of detail, and confidence.
- Lead cross-functional resolution of demand-related service, waste, constraint, allocation, launch, and promotional risks.
- Communicate forecast changes, business implications, and required actions clearly to both technical and executive audiences.
Advance Digital Planning and Analytics - Drive effective adoption of enterprise planning platforms, statistical forecasting, causal models, scenario capabilities, automation, and decision intelligence.
- Partner with Product, Technology, Analytics, and Data Science teams to improve model performance, data quality, explainability, workflow design, and user adoption.
- Promote probabilistic thinking and scenario planning to make uncertainty visible and support risk-based decisions.
- Identify opportunities to automate low-value work, simplify processes, improve planner productivity, and increase time spent on insights and decisions.
Lead, Develop, and Sustain a High-Performing Team - Lead, coach, and develop Demand Planning professionals through clear expectations, regular feedback, differentiated development plans, and meaningful career conversations.
- Build functional depth in forecasting, customer and commercial acumen, storytelling, systems, scenario analysis, and end-to-end supply chain thinking.
- Create an inclusive, accountable, and learning-oriented environment that encourages healthy challenge, experimentation, and continuous improvement.
- Build succession strength, clarify role coverage, and deploy resources dynamically against business priorities and planning risk.
Govern Standards, Controls, and Continuous Improvement - Ensure adherence to planning standards, data governance, controls, master-data requirements, and approved ways of working.
- Establish consistent performance reviews and action tracking across the team, with escalation of material risks and unresolved decisions.
- Lead significant process, system, or organizational improvement initiatives that have broad impact across Demand Planning.
- Benchmark practices, test new approaches, and scale proven improvements across portfolios and teams.
Minimum Requirements Experience: - 7 or more years of progressive experience in Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning, Commercial Planning, Customer Supply Chain, Analytics, or a related field.
- Prior people leadership or substantial team-lead experience, with evidence of developing talent and delivering results through others.
- Experience leading cross-functional planning processes and communicating with senior business leaders.
- Experience with modern enterprise planning systems and analytical tools. Kinaxis, SAP, advanced forecasting platforms, visualization tools, or comparable technologies are preferred.
- Consumer products, retail, highly promotional, seasonal, or multi-category planning experience is preferred.
- Advanced demand planning and forecasting expertise, including statistical and causal methods, segmentation, forecast error and bias analysis, scenario planning, and exception management.
- Strong understanding of integrated planning, supply chain trade-offs, customer and commercial planning, inventory, capacity, service, waste, and financial implications.
- Ability to synthesize complex data into a clear point of view, recommendation, and executive-ready narrative.
- Demonstrated people leadership, coaching, performance management, change leadership, and talent development capability.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive alignment across functions without relying solely on formal authority.
- Digital mindset with experience applying advanced planning platforms, analytics, automation, AI-enabled decision support, or data products to business processes.
- Strong operating discipline, business judgment, learning agility, and comfort leading through ambiguity and volatility.
Leadership Expectations - Thinks enterprise-first and connects planning choices to consumer, customer, financial, and supply chain outcomes.
- Makes uncertainty visible, brings a clear recommendation, and drives decisions to closure.
- Sets a high standard for facts, transparency, ownership, and follow-through.
- Develops people intentionally and creates an environment where challenge and learning improve performance.
- Leads change with clarity, empathy, pace, and sustained adoption.
Education: Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Business, Analytics, Economics, Engineering, Finance, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience. Advanced degree or professional certification is a plus.
Minimum Education & Requirements7+ years
