ERP SME & Global Design Authority (GDA)

A leading global FMCG organisation is delivering a major SAP S/4HANA transformation and is seeking a Global Planning & Scheduling Design Authority to lead end-to-end solution design across planning, detailed scheduling and capacity. This role will work closely with business stakeholders and system integration partners to ensure a robust, future-fit global template that is fit for purpose, testable, and deployable at scale.

The Opportunity

You'll act as the global design authority for Planning & Scheduling, shaping key design decisions, maintaining governance across the delivery lifecycle, and reducing programme risk through early identification of design gaps, data issues, integration challenges, and capacity limitations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead global Planning & Scheduling design across SAP S/4HANA, including MRP (including MRP Live), PP/DS, routings, work centres, capacity planning, finite scheduling and sequencing.
• Drive solution design decisions and recommendations, ensuring alignment to programme methodology and global template principles.
• Partner with cross-functional teams across Operations/Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Logistics, Finance (including Procurement), Marketing, Master Data, Testing and Data teams.
• Collaborate closely with System Integrators (SIs) and platform/CoE teams, providing oversight, challenge and guidance to design and build decisions.
• Ensure functional specifications are complete, accurate, traceable, and aligned to end-to-end business needs.
• Support integration design between S/4HANA and connected systems (e.g., APS/MES), ensuring a cohesive future-state design and interim operating models where required.
• Oversee configuration and delivery of bespoke elements such as extensions, integrations and workflows (working with technical teams).
• Support all testing phases (Unit, SIT, End-to-End, UAT, Regression), ensuring scenarios are complete and aligned to real operational flows.
• Support and guide data migration activities for both master and transactional data (planning and execution support).
• Support cutover and hypercare readiness for Planning & Scheduling, ensuring alignment across entities, factories and intercompany flows.
• Contribute to end-user enablement, training and knowledge transfer to ensure sustainable adoption.
• Proactively identify risks, issues and dependencies, escalating clearly with practical mitigation options.
• Ensure solution design meets internal controls, policies, regulatory and audit requirements.

Essential Experience & Skills (Must-Haves)

• Strong hands-on implementation experience with SAP S/4HANA PP/DS and Planning & Scheduling (MRP incl. MRP Live, work centres, routings, capacity models, sequencing / finite scheduling).
• Demonstrable experience delivering or integrating Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) tools (e.g., Kinaxis, Enterprise Scheduling tools, ePP/DS, or equivalent).
• Experience working on large-scale ERP transformation programmes.
• Proven ability to work effectively with and influence System Integrators, including challenging design decisions constructively.
• Experience designing or operating Planning & Scheduling across multiple factories, including intercompany flows.
• Strong knowledge of S/4 integration patterns (e.g., IDoc, API, EDI, RFC) between ERP and APS/MES ecosystems.
• Strong analytical, documentation and problem-solving capability, able to translate complex requirements into workable design.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) in IT, Engineering, Business Systems, or related field.
• SAP S/4HANA certification preferred (not essential).

Nice to Have

• Experience in FMCG or other global matrix organisations.
• Exposure to SAP data migration tooling and approaches.
• Experience working in agile or hybrid delivery environments.