Job Description:
📍 Birstall, West Yorkshire
💷 £35,000 - £41,000 DOE
🎁 + Performance Bonus & Exceptional Benefits
🕒 37.5 Hrs per week – Mon – Fri
📝 Fixed Term Contract – 12 Months (With potential for extension)
🌟 Why Join Us?
At Mars, we are a family-owned business driven by our Five Principles: Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency, and Freedom. The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today.
At our Birstall site, we produce some of the world's most beloved Petcare and Care & Treats brands. Joining us as a Lead Supply Planner means you are the heartbeat of our on-site supply chain, ensuring our production lines run smoothly, and our products reach millions of pets worldwide.
We are committed to your personal and professional growth, offering world-class training through Mars University and a highly supportive team environment.
💼 The Role
As the Lead Supply Planner, you will play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between demand, site operations, and inventory execution. You will own and drive the short-term 0–2 week planning operating window, optimising our production schedules using PDLS and Kinaxis to consistently meet Birstall's critical site tonnage commitments.
In this role, you will be the absolute authority on immediate execution, working together with site production teams and Line Managers. For planning horizons beyond the 2-week window, you will actively partner with and support our Central Planning team to ensure seamless alignment from mid-term strategy to daily execution.
Alongside our dedicated Material Planners (who manage raw material, Silo and packaging flows within SAP), you will collaborate closely with system Key Users to drive data integrity, and work with Outbound Planners to guarantee a synchronised flow from the factory floor all the way to finished goods distribution to UK & EU markets.
⭐ What’s in it for you?
- Structured Development: Direct access to Mars University, structured career paths, and tailored professional training.
- Health & Wellness: Onsite gym, private healthcare, equal parental leave, and access to on-site wellness specialists (nurse, osteopath, podiatrist).
- Financial Security: Generous pension scheme (up to 9% company contribution), performance bonus, and life assurance (4x salary).
- Life Balance: Annual leave starting at 24 days (rising to 32 with service), hybrid work options, and standard Mon - Fri hours.
- On-Site Perks: Free parking, a subsidised hot food restaurant, and plenty of pet-friendly perks!
✅ What We’re Looking For
- Relevant Experience: Solid background in factory scheduling, production planning, or detailed supply planning within a fast-moving manufacturing environment (FMCG experience is a major plus).
- Technical Expertise: Strong working knowledge of scheduling systems - ideally PDLS and Kinaxis. Exposure to SAP is highly beneficial, as you will coordinate daily with our Material Planners.
- Agile Execution: Proven ability to thrive in a rapid-response, short-term (0–2 week) operating horizon where quick problem-solving and decision-making are required.
- Collaborative Leadership: Excellent communication skills with a track record of building trusted relationships with on-site Line Managers, production teams, system Key Users, Outbound Planners, and central capacity planning teams.
- People Developer: A passion for coaching and developing team members, helping them step up into "Logistics Champions" across continuous improvement, L&D, and health & safety.
🔧 Key Responsibilities
- Develop, maintain, and optimise weekly production schedules to ensure efficient site operations, capacity utilisation, and customer service delivery.
- Monitor daily tonnage and production metrics, making real-time scheduling adjustments to support operational performance.
- Lead and participate in cross-functional planning meetings, including Capacity Planning, logistics, crewing, and factory operations forums, to ensure alignment across the site.
- Manage production running orders, labour planning, and scheduling priorities, ensuring resources are aligned with operational and customer demands.
- Conduct weekly plant and planning reviews, analysing key performance indicators including Customer Service Levels (CSL), tonnage, waste and case fill to drive continuous improvement.
- Support forward capacity planning, forecast maintenance, outage management, packaging requirements, and implementation of operational change initiatives to maintain production efficiency and service levels.
🌍 What You Can Expect from Mars
- Work alongside 130,000+ Associates worldwide guided by our Five Principles
- Be part of a purpose-driven company shaping “the world we want tomorrow”
- Access world-class training & development from day one
- Join a company with an industry-leading salary and benefits package
Skills Required
- Experience in factory scheduling, production planning, or detailed supply planning within a fast-moving manufacturing environment
- FMCG experience
- Working knowledge of scheduling systems, ideally PDLS and Kinaxis
- Exposure to SAP
- Ability to work effectively in a rapid-response 0–2 week planning horizon
- Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Ability to coach and develop team members
Mars Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Mars and has not been reviewed or approved by Mars.
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Healthcare Strength — The benefits package is positioned as comprehensive, with broad medical coverage and additional protections like life insurance and short- and long-term disability. Mental health support is emphasized, including free mental health services and wellbeing programming under initiatives such as Mars Be Well.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is highlighted as market-leading in the U.S., with an example of 18 weeks fully paid for both parents. Additional family-related leave types such as sick time for caregiving and bereavement leave are also described as part of the overall package.
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Retirement Support — Retirement offerings are described as strong, including 401(k) matching (with a 6% match cited) and pension plans in some cases. The broader package also references retirement savings options and contributions aligned to local market practice, supporting long-term financial security.
Mars Insights
What We Do
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us. Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 133,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world’s best-loved brands including DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M’s®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™; and take care of half of the world’s pets through our pet health services AniCura, Banfield Pet Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, Pet Partners™, and VCA™. We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive.
