Job Summary

The Planning Lead owns end-to-end demand, supply, distribution, and inventory planning for FSV lenses, frames, and accessories in India.

The role is responsible for creating one feasible and aligned operational plan that supports product availability, customer service, inventory health, working capital, and cost objectives. It leads the monthly SOP/IBP process and the weekly execution and exception-management cycle across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Logistics, Customer Service, and Product Management.

The role requires experience managing a large, variant-rich SKU portfolio with long-tail and intermittent demand, imported and/or locally sourced products, short customer lead times, and frequent product introductions and phase-outs.

Role scope

- Product categories: FSV lenses, frames, accessories, and associated consumables
- Portfolio: Approximately 20K+ active SKUs / 840K SKU-location combinations
- Supply network: >3 Supplying Plants (Import)
- Distribution network: 42 distribution centers serving 4 regions
- Supply model: Imported products, local production, and/or externally sourced finished goods
- Key systems: SAP ECC/S/4HANA, APO, SAP IBP, Power BI, or other tools

Key responsibilities

- SOP/IBP leadership
- Lead the monthly SOP/IBP cycle across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Product Management, Manufacturing, Procurement, Logistics, and Customer Service.
- Integrate demand, supply, capacity, inventory, distribution, and financial plans into one agreed operational plan.
- Highlight service, capacity, inventory, cost, and working-capital gaps and present fact-based scenarios for management decisions.
- Ensure clear decision ownership, action tracking, and timely escalation of unresolved issues.
- Translate annual business and financial plans into monthly and weekly operational plans.
- Lead regular execution reviews to manage short-term deviations from the agreed plan.

- Demand and assortment planning

- Own the unconstrained and consensus demand plan for FSV lenses, frames, accessories, and associated products.
- Develop statistical baselines and incorporate market intelligence, customer input, promotions, tenders, launches, seasonality, and channel trends.




- Plan demand at the appropriate product, region, channel, and SKU-location level.
- Manage complex product hierarchies and variant combinations across lens specifications, coatings, frame models, sizes, colors, and accessories, as applicable.
- Challenge commercial assumptions and reconcile differences between statistical forecasts, sales expectations, and financial plans.
- Measure and improve forecast accuracy and bias using clearly defined product and planning hierarchies.
- Apply differentiated forecasting methods for quick movers, long-tail products, intermittent demand, new products, and products approaching end of life.
- Support assortment reviews and SKU rationalization by providing demand, service, inventory, and obsolescence analysis.

- Supply, production, and import planning

- Develop feasible supply and production plans across local plants, global supplying locations, contract manufacturers, and external suppliers.
- Balance demand against material, machine, labor, supplier, import, and logistics constraints.
- Convert the consensus demand plan into purchasing, production, and supply requirements.
- Incorporate supplier lead times, manufacturing lead times, import lead times, minimum order quantities, batch sizes, and shipment calendars into supply plans.
- Set production and supply priorities and manage bottlenecks, shortages, backlog, and delayed inbound supply.
- Work with Procurement and suppliers to resolve material constraints and improve supply reliability.
- Maintain clear supply-risk visibility, quantified business impact, and time-bound recovery plans.
- Ensure appropriate planning discipline for make-to-stock, make-to-order, and other relevant supply models.

- Distribution and replenishment planning

- Own distribution requirements planning and replenishment across warehouses, regions, channels, and customer segments.




- Define appropriate stocking locations and replenishment policies based on demand patterns, service requirements, lead times, and portfolio segmentation.
- Translate supply availability and inbound plans into SKU-location deployment plans.
- Manage stock balancing and inter-location transfers to reduce shortages, excess stock, and unnecessary logistics costs.
- Define fair-share allocation and customer/channel prioritization rules during constrained-supply situations.
- Coordinate the deployment of imported and locally sourced inventory following production or shipment arrival.
- Monitor replenishment exceptions and resolve risks affecting service, inventory, or working capital.
- Partner with Logistics to optimize shipment frequency, mode, consolidation, and expedite decisions.

- Inventory planning and optimization

- Define inventory targets, safety-stock policies, reorder parameters, lot sizes, and service levels by portfolio segment.
- Apply appropriate portfolio segmentation, such as ABC-XYZ or equivalent, to differentiate planning and inventory policies.
- Optimize inventory across finished products, materials, components, accessories, and relevant consumables.
- Monitor inventory value, days of inventory, stock turns, ageing, excess, slow-moving, and obsolete stock.
- Lead root-cause analysis and mitigation plans for excess inventory and potential write-offs.
- Balance product availability and working-capital objectives using quantified service, cost, and risk trade-offs.
- Ensure inventory parameters are regularly reviewed and updated when demand, lead times, service targets, or product strategies change.

- Product lifecycle and portfolio-transition planning

- Lead supply-chain readiness for new lenses, coatings, frame collections, accessories, technologies, and portfolio changes.
- Coordinate demand ramp-up, supplier/material readiness, initial stock, system setup, deployment, and launch quantities.

Disclaimer: This job posting has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.

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