Production Planner

The Production Planner serves as the primary operational planning contact for one of Tessco's largest customers, translating forecasts, project requirements, sales orders, deployment schedules, and changing priorities into production and material plans.

This role develops and maintains production schedules based on customer demand, inventory, labor and equipment capacity, project timelines, and required ship dates. The Production Planner partners with Warehouse Operations, Inventory Control, Purchasing, Customer Service, Sales, Project Management, and the customer to ensure production and delivery commitments are met.

• Serve as the primary operational planning contact for the assigned customer and build strong relationships with customer supply chain, operations, procurement, and project teams.
• Participate in forecast, project planning, and order status meetings while reviewing forecasts, deployment schedules, sales orders, delivery dates, and changing priorities.
• Translate customer demand into production schedules, labor plans, and capacity requirements for cable cutting, assemblies, kitting, configured products, packaging, labeling, and staged deployments.
• Understand customer product specifications, packaging, labeling, documentation, and shipping requirements.
• Provide Project Management and customers with updates on production status, material availability, completion dates, shortages, risks, and recovery plans based on inventory, capacity, and lead times.
• Document customer commitments, forecast revisions, and priority changes while maintaining confidentiality of customer information.
• Monitor service level agreements and support customer business reviews with operational metrics and improvement plans.

• Develop, prioritize, and maintain daily, weekly, and long-range production schedules and work orders based on customer demand, inventory, capacity, and shipment requirements.
• Optimize labor, equipment utilization, and production flow while minimizing downtime, changeovers, scrap, and unnecessary material movement.
• Coordinate assembly, kitting, cable cutting, labeling, packaging, configuration, and other value-added production activities.
• Adjust production schedules to address changing demand, staffing, material availability, equipment constraints, and customer priorities while proactively managing at-risk orders, backlogs, and recovery plans.

• Ensure required materials, components, packaging, labels, and finished goods are available and properly allocated before production begins.
• Identify and resolve material shortages and inventory discrepancies with Purchasing, Inventory Control, Operations, and customers when appropriate.
• Support accurate inventory, production, and material transactions.
• Monitor and manage excess, obsolete, damaged, or substituted inventory resulting from forecast or project changes.

• Serve as the communication link between Operations, Project Management, Sales, Shipping, Warehouse leadership, and the customer.
• Lead or participate in daily production planning meetings and communicate production priorities, schedule changes, and realistic completion dates.
• Escalate material shortages, capacity constraints, equipment issues, or specification questions that could impact customer commitments.
• Coordinate customer escalations through resolution while balancing production, receiving, picking, packing, and shipping priorities.

• Create, maintain, and monitor production work orders in NetSuite or the ERP/WMS from release through shipment.
• Investigate delayed, uncommitted, or incomplete work orders and resolve processing issues.
• Maintain reports, dashboards, production plans, order trackers, shortage reports, and planning documentation to support customer and operational performance.

• Monitor schedule attainment, production performance, backlog, labor utilization, material shortages, work order aging, and on-time delivery.
• Analyze production delays and customer service issues, perform root-cause analysis, and implement corrective actions.
• Identify and implement improvements to production flow, inventory accuracy, communication, staging, and order visibility.
• Support quality initiatives, cycle counting, process improvements, and customer-specific procedures and documentation.

• High school diploma or equivalent required; associate's or bachelor's degree in supply chain, operations, business, logistics, telecommunications, or a related field preferred.
• Three or more years of experience in production planning, scheduling, inventory control, supply chain, warehouse operations, or customer account planning.
• Experience supporting major customer accounts and working directly with customers preferred.
• Experience in telecommunications, electronics, distribution, manufacturing, or other related industries preferred.
• Experience in production scheduling, forecasting, work orders, inventory control, material planning, capacity planning, and order fulfillment.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and ERP/WMS systems such as NetSuite, RF-SMART, or similar.