Demand Planner / Supply Chain Planner in Walsall

TR Fastenings (TR) is part of Trifast plc, a leading international specialist in the design, engineering, manufacture, and distribution of high-quality industrial fastenings and Category 'C' components principally to major global assembly industries. It supplies to some 5,000 customers in 75 countries worldwide, serving a range of industries including Automotive, Smart Infrastructure, Medical, General Industrial, and Distributors.

We are looking to recruit a Demand Planner on a permanent basis to join our Supply Chain team based at our National Distribution Centre in Walsall (WS2 8DQ). This is a newly created role and an important opportunity to establish a strong demand planning capability within the business.

The successful candidate will help the business operate from a single, trusted view of demand, supporting effective supply planning, purchasing, inventory management, customer service, and operational decision-making. Responsibilities include:

• Defining and embedding demand planning processes, governance, reporting, and best practice.
• Leading the demand planning process, ensuring assumptions, risks, opportunities, and recommendations are clearly communicated to stakeholders.
• Reviewing forecast variance with Sales and key stakeholders, ensuring gaps, risks, and opportunities are understood and reflected in the demand plan.
• Handing over a clear, agreed demand plan to Material Planning to support purchasing, safety stock, lead time, reorder point, and inventory decisions.
• Using demand and inventory segmentation techniques, such as ABC/XYZ analysis, to prioritise planning focus, improve forecast accuracy, and support appropriate inventory strategies.
• Monitoring forecast accuracy, bias, service, stock health, inventory turns, excess stock, and obsolete inventory, identifying root causes and driving continuous improvement.

You will be a confident and experienced demand planning professional with strong analytical capability, excellent attention to detail, and the ability to turn data into clear insight and practical actions. You will bring hands-on demand planning knowledge and be comfortable working cross-functionally, challenging assumptions constructively, influencing stakeholders, and helping the business build stronger demand planning discipline.

Requirements:

• 5+ years’ clear demand planning experience, with demonstrable experience owning, developing, or significantly improving a demand planning process.
• Experience in a manufacturing, distribution, industrial, or fast-paced supply chain environment.
• Strong understanding of demand planning principles, including forecasting, seasonality, customer demand, product lifecycle management, and inventory control.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel skills and confidence analysing large and complex datasets.
• Confident using Power BI or similar analytics and reporting tools to create insight, track performance, and support data-led planning decisions.
• Experience using an ERP or planning system, ideally Microsoft Dynamics 365 or similar.
• Customer-first mindset with strong commercial awareness and a disciplined approach to data accuracy.
• Experience in using AI tools for demand planning.
• Experience with dedicated demand planning, advanced planning, or reporting tools.
• Exposure to structured planning cycles such as S&OP.
• Experience supporting new product introduction, product transitions, or end-of-life planning.

This is an opportunity to make a visible impact across our UK&I business by helping to establish a stronger demand planning capability from the ground up. You will play a key role in improving forecast accuracy, strengthening supply chain performance, and supporting better business decisions, while working closely with commercial and operational teams to shape a more proactive, data-led planning culture.

Benefits include:

• 25 days holiday + 8 bank holidays.
• On-site parking.
• Life insurance *4 basic salary.
• Pension.
• Employee Assistance Programme.