S&OP Director

S&OP Director

ADB Safegate

Zaventem, Belgium

Mission:

As S&OP Director, you lead our global supply-demand alignment process creating transparency on demand from the regions and supply from our plants and suppliers. You balance the available resources across our manufacturing network to secure the highest possible service level to our customers with the lowest usage of resources (OPEX and working capital). You interact with both regional Sales Team and our Operations Team to run and optimize our end-to-end S&OP process.

You act both as an expert and as a referee in our sales execution processes from ensuring best-in-class demand management to smooth fulfilment or order prioritization. You and your team are the central hub of anything related to our customer demand and our ability to serve them from our suppliers and plants.

Responsibilities:

General and task management

• Global S&OP Orchestration: Design, run, and optimize the end-to-end global Sales and Operations Planning process to align regional demand with global supply.
• Demand Transparency & Forecasting: Create and maintain regional sales forecast dashboards to provide a 12-month rolling view of customer demand ensuring correct and unified usage of our contract, forecast and quote tools.
• Master Production Scheduling (MPS): Create and maintain the master production schedule to optimize resource use and ensure timely delivery across all plants and sub-contracted manufacturing.
• Global Production Balancing: Monitor and balance production volumes between manufacturing sites (Columbus, Zaventem, Tianjin) to maximize service levels], including the optimization of our components supply.
• Working Capital Challenging: Act as a process expert and challenger for inventory levels (components and finished goods) and cash flow drivers (receivables and payments in advance).
• Supplier Capacity & Procurement Alignment: Act as the single source of truth on demand for the Procurement team to challenge and validate supplier capacity against the global demand forecast.
• Supply Constraint Resolution: Collaborate with Procurement to identify potential supply bottlenecks and provide the “referee” decision on order prioritization when supplier capacity is constrained.
• Long-term Capacity Planning: Provide Procurement with a 12-month revolving visibility into demand to support long-term capacity bookings and supplier relationship management.
• Lifecycle & Change Management: Orchestrate the S&OP impact of New Product Introductions (NPI) and Engineering Changes by managing the roll-out/roll-off of component supply to minimize obsolescence and stock-outs.
• Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management: Develop and maintain high-level relationships with Plant Team, Regional Sales Teams, and Procurement Team to ensure end to end alignment in our supply-chain.
• Production Analytics & Trend Identification: Analyse global production and demand data to identify trends, bottlenecks, and potential business interruptions.
• Process Continuous Improvement: Continuously evaluate S&OP, scheduling, and demand management processes to drive best-in-class operational efficiency

Departmental Interfaces & Collaboration:

• Global OPS community: Collaborate with Plant Managers, Tactical Supply Shain Leads and Production Manager across Columbus, Zaventem, and Tianjin to balance production volumes and optimize resource usage.
• OPS Transformation Team: Act as a process expert and project manager to implement standardized S&OP processes across our global footprint.
• Commercial Team: Interact with regional sales and order management to validate forecasting data and provide the final “referee” decision on order prioritization and sales execution.
• Procurement: Serve as the single source of truth for demand data to manage supplier capacity and coordinate the roll-out/roll-off of components during engineering changes.

Skills/Qualifications:

Business Skills:

• Advanced Supply & Inventory Planning: Expert in managing complex supply chains across multiple global sites, including the design of inventory policies for components and finished goods.
• Capacity Orchestration & Prioritization: Proven ability to act as a “referee” in allocating constrained resources, balancing plant capacity against regional demand to maximize service levels. Sales Administration…
• Strategic Sales Administration: Expert in governing sales execution processes, ensuring unified tool usage and accurate demand management from quote to order.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Exceptional skill in navigating internal networks to solve high-visibility problems and aligning Global Ops, Sales and Procurement.

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience in complex international supply chain management and/or sales operations.
• Ideally, 5+ years of experience in the airfield lighting industry with specific knowledge of project management and product portfolios.
• Consistently delivering high-impact results in professional service or complex manufacturing environments.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, supply chain, or a related field is required.
• Master’s degree or MBA is ad advantage.

IT-Skills:

• Good knowledge of Power BI.
• Excellent knowledge of Excel.
• Excellent knowledge of ERP systems – SAP is a must.
• Microsoft Office: Outlook, Word & PowerPoint.

Languages:

• Fluent in English.

Competencies:

• Strong ownership and initiative mentality.
• Exceptional attention for detail.
• Highly analytical and results oriented.
• Effective in high pace environments.
• Strong stakeholder and team collaboration.
• Proactive and responsible leadership attitude.
• Good knowledge in manufacturing process and execution system.