Senior Production Planner in Cheadle

As a Senior Production Planner at JCB Earthmovers, you’ll play a critical role in creating and maintaining robust, executable production plans that support customer demand, operational efficiency, and business performance. Working in a fast paced manufacturing environment, you’ll take ownership of production planning governance, ensuring alignment between sales demand, S&OP outputs, capacity, and material availability. Strong analytical capability is essential, with Advanced Excel and SAP forming the core tools used to drive planning accuracy, decision making, and risk management.

What does this role involve day to day?

• Production Planning, Lay & Sign-Out Governance: Own and maintain the production lay plan, ensuring alignment between lay, sign-out, and operational execution; monitor, report, and manage variances between lay, sign-out, and actual build; review plans regularly with the Senior Planner / Production Control Manager, adjusting for demand changes, constraints, and business priorities; sequence and plan new orders into the production schedule, ensuring feasibility within capacity and material constraints.
• S&OP, Demand Validation & Forecast Integrity: Lead the development of monthly and annual production plans as part of the S&OP process; validate production plans against sales demand, challenging assumptions and resolving supply-demand gaps; ensure primary build volumes are accurately forecast within SAP across agreed planning horizons; maintain planning accuracy across firm, forecast, and strategic horizons to protect service levels and operational stability.
• Order Conversion & SAP Execution: Convert planned orders into production orders in SAP in line with agreed sign-out and firm horizons; maintain SAP data integrity, ensuring accuracy of order quantities, dates, and sequencing; monitor execution against plan, identifying and resolving system or process misalignment.
• Sales Specials & Exception Management: Chair and manage Sales Special Reviews, assessing feasibility, material impact, capacity constraints, and delivery risk; provide clear recommendations on acceptance, rejection, or mitigation actions; ensure approved sales specials are accurately reflected in SAP and the production plan.
• Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Leadership: Act as a key interface between Sales, Operations, Purchasing, and Supply Chain; present clear, data-driven insights in planning, sign-out, and escalation forums; influence decision-making through scenario planning and clear articulation of trade-offs.
• Risk, Recovery & Continuous Improvement: Identify and manage production and material risks impacting plan adherence; drive recovery actions through re-sequencing, re-planning, and stakeholder alignment; support continuous improvement of planning governance, S&OP effectiveness, and SAP usage.

This will be suited to you if…

• You have proven experience in a production planning or materials planning role within a manufacturing environment.
• You bring strong working knowledge of SAP (or equivalent ERP systems) within a production planning context.
• You have demonstrable experience using SAP for forecasting, planned order management, order conversion, and horizon management.
• You possess advanced Excel capability, with the ability to analyse, manipulate, and present large, complex datasets.
• You have strong experience using Excel for scenario planning, demand validation, variance analysis, and S&OP decision support.
• You’re highly methodical and able to structure complex planning activity into clear, logical processes.
• You’re well organised, comfortable managing multiple planning horizons, priorities, and stakeholders.
• You’re detail-focused, disciplined in follow-up, and committed to strong planning governance and control.

What happens next?

Ordinarily, our Resourcing Team reviews and shortlists CVs. If shortlisted, you’ll speak to one of our Recruiters to discuss the role further. Our interview process usually consists of an initial team’s interview followed by an in-person interview. We’ll keep in touch throughout the process but if you have any questions, please get in touch at recruitment@jcb.com.

What’s in it for you?

This is your chance to join a company that values expertise not only in rewards but also in real employee care. At JCB you don’t just get a competitive salary, 33 days’ holiday and access to our company pension—you can also use our onsite gym, in-house doctor and dentist. We have an ULEV car scheme available for our employees too. Then there’s the JCB Rewards Hub, which gives you discounts with high street retailers. Feel like biking to work? There’s our Cycle to Work Scheme.

We value diversity and welcome applications from candidates from all backgrounds. We’re committed to ensuring our recruitment process is fair and inclusive. If you face any accessibility challenges with your online application and require additional support, you have the option of speaking to a member of our Recruitment Team who can support you to complete an application in an alternative format. If you would benefit from this support, please email recruitment@jcb.com, and a member of the team will be in touch.

Recruitment Agencies: JCB does not accept any speculative approaches to present candidates for advertised vacancies.