Demand & Supply Planner – End-to-End Planning & MRP

Who We Are

Starbond is a growing adhesive company committed to excellence, customer centricity, curiosity, humility, and continuous improvement. We sell through Amazon, Shopify, and B2B channels and are strengthening our supply chain planning capabilities to support reliable product availability and scalable growth.

The Role

Starbond is seeking a highly analytical and proactive Demand & Supply Planner with at least five years of hands-on experience across the complete planning cycle: demand forecasting, supply planning, inventory optimization, material requirements planning (MRP), and production planning.

This role owns planning from end to end. You will develop a reliable consensus demand forecast, convert it into inventory and material requirements, and create executable purchasing, production, and distribution plans. You will monitor actual performance, identify changes and risks, and continuously revise the plan based on new information.

This is not a role for someone who has only maintained an existing planning system. The successful candidate must also be able to build, audit, and improve an Excel-based planning and MRP tool from the ground up. You will connect channel forecasts, bills of materials, inventory, open purchase orders, supplier lead times, capacity, and production requirements into one dependable planning process.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical planning knowledge with excellent judgment, emotional intelligence, ownership, and proactive communication. You should be comfortable identifying weak assumptions, explaining risks clearly, and recommending practical improvements rather than waiting for detailed instructions.

Key Responsibilities

Demand Planning and Forecast Ownership
Own the SKU- and channel-level demand forecast across Amazon, Shopify, and B2B.
Develop rolling forecasts using sales history, seasonality, promotions, customer commitments, product life cycles, channel plans, market intelligence, and future business assumptions.
Partner with Sales, Marketing, Finance, and leadership to gather forecast inputs, challenge assumptions, resolve differences, and establish a documented consensus demand plan.
Separate baseline demand from promotional, event-driven, new-product, and one-time demand.
Track forecast accuracy and bias by SKU and channel, investigate material variances, and improve forecasting methods over time.
Maintain documented forecast assumptions, risks, opportunities, scenarios, and version history.
Identify demand changes early and clearly communicate their expected impact on inventory, purchasing, production, capacity, and cash flow.

Supply and Inventory Planning
Translate the approved demand forecast into time-phased inventory, purchasing, production, and distribution requirements.
Establish and maintain SKU-level reorder points, safety stock, order quantities, and inventory targets.
Apply appropriate safety-stock methods using desired service levels, demand variability, lead-time variability, and supplier reliability.
Monitor stockout risks, excess inventory, slow-moving products, inventory turnover, forecast accuracy, and service levels.
Create constrained and unconstrained supply plans and identify where supplier, material, capacity, cash, or storage limitations prevent the business from meeting demand.
Recommend prioritized actions that balance customer service, inventory investment, operating cost, and business risk.

MRP and Excel Tool Development
Build, maintain, audit, and improve an Excel-based MRP and replenishment system.
Integrate core planning data, including the SKU master, sales forecast, stock on hand, open purchase orders, supplier lead times, bills of materials, and purchasing recommendations.
Create reliable formulas, data-validation controls, exception flags, dashboards, and scenario models that make the tool accurate, understandable, and easy to maintain.
Identify broken links, duplicated data, manual work, weak assumptions, and opportunities for automation.
Document planning logic, data sources, ownership, update frequency, and standard operating procedures.

BOM, Materials, and Production Planning
Perform BOM explosion by converting finished-goods demand into component, packaging, and raw-material requirements.
Account for existing component inventory, open orders, lead times, minimum order quantities, yields, scrap, and production constraints.
Translate material availability and demand requirements into practical production schedules.
Identify material shortages, capacity conflicts, and timing risks early and recommend feasible solutions.
Coordinate with Procurement, Operations, suppliers, and warehouse partners to align purchase and production plans.

Supply Planning and Risk Management
Evaluate supplier performance, including actual versus quoted lead times, delivery reliability, quality issues, and supply variability.
Recommend safety-stock adjustments, order timing, secondary sourcing, or other mitigation measures based on quantified risk.
Develop supply scenarios for demand changes, supplier delays, promotions, new-product launches, and capacity limitations.
Ensure planning recommendations balance product availability, working capital, storage constraints, and operational cost.

S&OP, Reporting, and Cross-Functional Communication
Provide concise planning updates that clearly identify risks, business impact, recommended actions, responsible owners, and deadlines.
Lead or support a structured monthly S&OP planning cycle connecting demand, supply, inventory, capacity, and financial considerations.
Partner with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Procurement, Operations, and leadership to reconcile forecasts with supply capabilities and business priorities.
Present S&OP scenarios, gaps, tradeoffs, assumptions, and recommendations to decision-makers.
Document agreed decisions and ensure changes flow into the demand forecast, supply plan, purchasing plan, and production schedule.
Communicate proactively when information is incomplete, assumptions change, or a plan is at risk.

Required Qualifications

At least five years of hands-on experience covering both demand planning and supply planning, including inventory, materials, or production planning.
Demonstrated ownership of a rolling SKU-level forecast and the ability to translate it into an executable supply plan.
Strong understanding of forecasting methods, seasonality, promotions, forecast accuracy, forecast bias, consensus planning, and scenario analysis.
Demonstrated experience building or substantially redesigning an MRP, inventory-planning, or replenishment tool in Excel.
Strong knowledge of reorder-point logic, safety-stock modeling, lead-time variability, service levels, and inventory optimization.
Practical experience with BOM explosion and raw-material or component planning.
Advanced Excel skills, including structured tables, XLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, PivotTables, conditional logic, data validation, error controls, and scenario modeling.
Experience translating forecasts into purchase and production requirements.
Strong analytical and critical-thinking skills, with the ability to challenge assumptions constructively.
Excellent written and spoken English.
Strong ownership, emotional intelligence, attention to detail, and proactive communication.
Availability to work a full-time schedule aligned with Pacific Time.