Senior Director Global Supply Planning and Inventory Confidential Search

Location: Remote | Country: United States

The Opportunity

Our client, a complex global enterprise with an extensive manufacturing network, is seeking a senior leader to define and elevate its global capabilities in supply planning, inventory management, and material requirements planning. The successful candidate will establish the operating model, planning strategies, standards, governance, policies, playbooks, and capability roadmap required to balance customer service, working capital, manufacturing efficiency, and supply chain resilience. This role will serve as the enterprise authority for supply planning and inventory, partnering closely with regional teams to improve maturity and accelerate adoption of consistent global practices. This is a highly visible remote role based in the United States. It will work closely with leaders across integrated business planning, demand planning, Manufacturing, Procurement, Logistics, Commercial, Finance, Technology, and regional Supply Chain organizations.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the vision, operating model, governance framework, and multi-year roadmap for global supply planning and inventory capabilities.
• Establish enterprise standards, methodologies, policies, playbooks, implementation toolkits, and performance measures.
• Lead a global supply planning community of practice and partner with regional organizations to strengthen capability adoption.
• Monitor capability maturity, implementation effectiveness, and business outcomes, then use those insights to improve planning performance.
• Define enterprise supply chain segmentation and differentiated planning, production, and inventory strategies by product, process, and customer requirement.
• Develop practical planning playbooks for continuous, batch, discrete, campaign-based, and other relevant manufacturing environments.
• Own enterprise planning policies and parameters, including planning horizons, frozen periods, planning frequencies, governance, lead times, safety stocks, lot sizes, replenishment strategies, and planning calendars.
• Partner with product lifecycle and master data leaders to improve planning data, parameter quality, and governance.
• Set enterprise standards for make-to-stock, make-to-order, engineer-to-order, and campaign-based planning where applicable.
• Establish methodologies for constrained planning, finite capacity planning, bottleneck management, and scenario planning.
• Strengthen supply planning through advanced planning systems, optimization, analytics, and AI-enabled decision support.
• Own inventory policies, segmentation methodologies, optimization strategies, and governance across the enterprise.
• Define inventory strategies that balance service, working capital, resilience, and manufacturing efficiency.
• Develop inventory health metrics and lead efforts to improve turns while reducing excess, obsolete, aging, and slow-moving inventory.
• Define standards for material requirements planning, replenishment methodologies, and critical planning parameters.
• Establish metrics for parameter health and governance compliance, working across Manufacturing, Procurement, Logistics, and Master Data to improve planning assumptions.
• Partner with integrated business planning and demand planning leadership to align demand, supply, manufacturing, inventory, and executive decision-making.
• Balance customer service, operational capability, inventory investment, manufacturing efficiency, and financial performance through enterprise planning.
• Define business requirements for advanced planning systems, planning technologies, analytics, optimization, and AI-enabled planning.
• Build strong cross-functional partnerships that improve material availability, capacity utilization, network responsiveness, and operational agility.

Qualifications and Experience

Education and Professional Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Engineering, Operations, Business, or a related discipline; a master's degree or MBA is preferred.
• At least 12 years of progressive leadership experience in supply planning, inventory management, production planning, or a closely related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience leading global planning transformations and capability development within a complex multinational organization.
• Deep knowledge of ERP, advanced planning systems, optimization, analytics, and AI-enabled planning technologies.
• Strong command of inventory strategy, planning parameters, MRP, capacity planning, segmentation, and integrated planning.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and drive cross-functional change without relying on direct authority.

Leadership Profile

• Strategic and systems-oriented thinker who can connect policy, process, data, technology, and business outcomes.
• Strong analytical judgment and structured problem-solving capability.
• Collaborative leadership style with credibility across global, regional, and functional teams.
• Enterprise mindset with a bias toward standardization, adoption, and continuous improvement.
• Clear communicator who can translate complex planning concepts into practical decisions and actions.

Measures of Success

• Greater planning capability maturity and adoption of global standards.
• Improved inventory turns, inventory health, and working capital performance.
• Reduced excess, obsolete, aging, and slow-moving inventory.
• Improved planning parameter quality, governance compliance, and planning stability.
• Stronger manufacturing performance, material availability, and customer service.
• Successful implementation and sustained adoption of digital planning capabilities.