Stord is looking for a VP, Fulfillment Planning & Optimization to lead the end to end process of translating customer demand into operational readiness across our fulfillment network. This leader will own Stord's Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process, turning customer and order forecasts into a clear operating plan for the labor, infrastructure, training, and support required to meet demand.
Sitting at the intersection of Customer Experience, Operations, and Operations Support, this leader will program manage the full planning cycle from demand forecasting and operational requirements through resource deployment, performance tracking, and reforecasting, ensuring the network is positioned to deliver against customer commitments efficiently and at scale.
What You'll Do:S&OP & Demand Planning: Own Stord's S&OP process across the fulfillment network, creating a single operating view of expected customer demand and the resources required to support it.
- Partner with CX and customers to understand expected order volume, promotions, launches, seasonality, and other demand drivers.
- Translate customer forecasts into site, process, shift, and time specific operating requirements.
- Validate customer forecasts using leading operational indicators, including inbound inventory and historical demand patterns.
- Identify forecast risk early and develop clear scenarios for expected, upside, and downside demand.
- Establish a consistent planning cadence across customers, sites, and support functions.
Labor Planning: Translate demand into a comprehensive workforce plan across Stord's fulfillment network.
- Determine labor requirements by site, shift, process path, and planning horizon.
- Partner with Operations and People teams to ensure hiring, staffing, scheduling, and training plans can support forecasted demand.
- Track labor demand against actual labor delivery and surface gaps early enough to intervene.
- Build planning models that account for productivity, attendance, attrition, ramp curves, seasonality, and other operational realities.
- Continuously improve the accuracy and responsiveness of Stord's labor planning models.
Operational Readiness: Translate the operating forecast into clear requirements for the teams responsible for enabling Operations.
The forecast should trigger a coordinated readiness plan across:
- MHE: Equipment, capacity, maintenance, and material handling requirements.
- EHS & Facilities: Building readiness, safety requirements, space, and facility capacity.
- Procurement: Supplies, packaging, equipment, and other operating inputs.
- Industrial Engineering & Continuous Improvement: Capacity, process design, building layout, productivity, and future state operating models.
- Training: Training capacity, onboarding requirements, cross training, and workforce readiness.
Ensure these teams understand what is coming, what Operations will require, when it is needed, and whether delivery is on track.
Readiness Program Management: Own the program management layer connecting S&OP to execution.
- Translate the S&OP plan into specific requirements, owners, milestones, and delivery dates across support functions.
- Maintain a single view of operational readiness across the network.
- Track dependencies and escalate risks before they become operational failures.
- Hold teams accountable for delivering the resources required to support forecasted demand.
- Create clear executive visibility into where the network is ready, where it is at risk, and where intervention is required.
Actuals, Feedback & Continuous Replanning: Close the loop between planning and reality.
Once volume begins flowing through the network, this leader owns the process for understanding: What did we forecast? What actually happened? Why was it different? What needs to change now?
- Monitor actual inbound and outbound volume against forecast.
- Measure forecast accuracy by customer, site, and planning horizon.
- Use actual inbound volume and other leading indicators to continuously validate and refine outbound forecasts.
- Determine whether forecast misses were driven by customer forecast accuracy, internal planning assumptions, labor delivery, productivity, or operational execution.
- Feed those learnings back into S&OP and continuously adjust labor and resource plans.
- Build a planning organization that becomes increasingly accurate and responsive as Stord scales.
Basic Qualifications:- Significant experience owning S&OP, workforce planning, labor planning, capacity planning, or network planning at scale within a complex fulfillment, distribution, retail, manufacturing, or logistics network.
- Deep understanding of how order forecasts translate into labor hours, productivity requirements, equipment, space, training, and operating capacity.
- A track record operating in environments where demand shifts quickly and planning decisions have immediate operational and financial consequences.
- Strong analytical skills paired with an operator's instinct. You are comfortable challenging assumptions across both Operations and planning teams and are focused on whether the plan actually works on the floor.
- Exceptional cross functional program management skills, with the ability to drive accountability across senior leaders and create structure across functions without directly managing every team involved.
- Experience building planning processes, systems, and teams that can scale with a rapidly growing business.
