Product Lead, Supply Chain Inventory & Planning

The Lead Demand Planner, Limited Time Offers will be the product owner for LTO forecasting, owning the LTO forecast and developing it in collaboration with key partners, such as the LTO Inventory Lead, Supply Chain Data & Analytics, Launch Teams, and other LTO-related workstreams. This role will connect the dots between analytics, supplier and distribution center communications, promotion strategy, and business requirements to optimize LTO campaigns throughout the year.

This role will partner with Supply Chain Data & Analytics to ensure data quality and add business context to the mathematics to help create the best possible forecasting methods. They will leverage the forecast data to work with the LTO inventory lead and launch team to ensure suppliers and DCs are adequately prepared for upcoming LTOs stock and lead time requirements.

The person in this role will review the forecast with knowledge of business context and sufficient knowledge of the source data and forecast algorithms to make recommendations to Supply Chain Data & Analytics and the LTO Inventory Lead on the best forecasts to enable lead time for suppliers to get required stock.

This role will also lead internal communication efforts to ensure all necessary teams involved know the pre-campaign projects, the during-campaign accuracy and stock, and the post-campaign root cause discussions on where the forecast went well and where it can be improved. They will update the respective teams with respect to the forecast and business knowledge so adjustments can be made before, during, and after any given LTO.

A curious, empathic, and life-long learner who wants a challenge that directly impacts restaurants will likely flourish in this role.

• Build strong relationships and becoming trusted partner of key business stakeholders and restaurants
• Collect & translate forecast building into single unconstrained demand plan that can be used by Inventory Leads, Launch Teams, and respective LTO partners
• Generate and monitors demand forecast accuracy, bias and other metrics and KPIs to track performance of LTO
• Identify gaps in current metric performance and leads root cause to improve forecast
• Support cleansing master data for the LTO demand plan (i.e., outlier correction, product development, restaurant projections, seasonal fluctuations, etc.)
• Adjust forecast as necessary to increase forecast accuracy, enable sufficient lead time for suppliers, and enable the most accurate LTO stock to support operators
• Participate and leads various reoccurring review meetings, taking complex or technical information and explaining it to a variety of technical and non-technical audiences
• Define requirements for alerts to drive exception-based planning.
• Constantly strive to learn from partner groups and restaurants for how to improve LTO forecasts and communication

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain, Mathematics / Statistics, or related degree
• Ability to understand and communicate analytics output and insights to a broad business audience
• Experience with event forecasting
• Knowledge of supply chain or inventory management
• Strong interpersonal, organizational, and verbal / written communication skills
• Attention to detail with a proactive, self-starter mentality
• Creativity to push for continuous improvements within established systems and processes
• Ability to partner and influence across functional areas, especially in a matrixed environment, to drive alignment
• Strong ability to drive results while developing and maintaining relationships

• Master’s degree in supply chain, Mathematics / Statistics, or related Quantitative degree
• Experience leading Quick Serve Restaurant event forecasting and/or Limited Time Offer forecasting
• Demonstrated critical thinking / problem solving skills applied to organizational challenges
• Extensive experience leading inventory management or inventory optimization functions
• Experience running promotional events from a supply chain perspective
• Proven track record leading work across complex teams and diverse business environments
• Master’s degree in supply chain, Mathematics / Statistics, or related Quantitative degree