Process Steward Inbound at Mars in Veghel, North Brabant, NL

Job Description:

FIT for YOU?

• Enthused to boost your teams journey with your digital skills?
• Inspired to be part of the team that digitally reimagines the way we work at Mars?
• Want to practice your digital muscle and ability to engage others on the journey?

Mars is setting up the Centre of Excellence, the driving force of a human centric digital planning transformation. Want to be part of this uplifting transformation by driving the continuous improvement of processes in the planning teams? Read more below….

CONTEXT &THE TEAM

In this rapidly changing world, an agile supply chain (SC) makes the difference for our customer and consumers. Mars believes that a human centric and digitally connected planning team is key to unlock this as it is the glue for ONE end to end SC team. With “enterprise planning” Mars is initiating a whole new organisational structure, future fit planning capabilities & processes and underlying best in class systems. It transforms the way Mars SC works: more connected, transparent, faster, agile, customer focused and digital. In short an exciting human centric, digital transformation journey for the whole Mars SC.

The (Planning) Center of Excellence -CoE- sits at the heart of this transformation. It can be seen as a digital catalyst to speed up and strengthen the planning transformation. The team services the European sourcing circle. It will operate by the principals of: full transparency of processes and data, planning by exception and continuous improvement of people processes and systems. In practice this means a build-measure-learn approach that is implemented through:

• monitor (adopted) planning ways of working,
• provide action driven insights to the business
• identify best practices internal and external,
• build new capabilities, processes, tools and dashboards,
• create a machine driven forecast as a common point of reference
• store and retrieve the right data with appropriate quality checks
• provide training for tools and ways of working

As this transforms the way of working in Mars the CoE is looking to create a strong dynamic team of digital savvy and content heavy change agents. We will share the common passion to bring the benefits of a digital way of working to the people in the (planning) operation all around Europe for their own benefit and that of customers / consumers.

THE ROLE

Within the CoE team the Process Steward report to the Operational Excellence lead. The Process Steward is responsible to ensure process standardization and process adherence for their area of scope within the chocolate and gum business in Mars Europe.

There are 2 key principles behind the role:

• First is that the business teams are driving the daily operations and are owning the process, the process stewards are inducing a continuous improvement mindset in the business teams driven by his expertise.
• Second processes should become over time digitally traceable (i.e. democratise the process status so everyone can see what is going on not just the planners directly involved) this will make it easier to coordinate efforts across teams and allow continuous benchmark across categories and market by the users themselves.

In the OPEX team we have multiple process stewards, split by demand & supply focus. This job vacancies is around supply chain, specified on the inbound process at Mars (Supply R&P). You will be responsible to lead improvement project(s) to increase ways of working between the raws & pack suppliers and Mars to ensure better availability of the raws & packs in the Mars European network.

Following these principles the process will: assessing adherence to process, collect learnings, facilitate knowledge exchange and developing corrective action plans, discussing and aligning with management, but also align & discuss with Planners to understand the issues & root cause to improve the processes.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain practical implication of strategic SC design.
• benchmarking performance and compare against target operating model & best practice
• create dashboards to provide insights on performance and progress for teams and senior decision takers
• Identify gaps in the current understanding, alignment and collaboration
• Initiate and also lead key project to drive continuous improvement – starting to use SCRUM for that is a bonus to Mars
• Facilitate discussion among experts and decision takers to foster innovation (establish community of practice)
• Drive the digital agenda to enhance collaboration (tool selection , implementation and enhancement)
• Engage and extend in X-regional best practice network
• Educate leaders, team managers and planners on digital connected ways of working
• Support the (digital) collection of business knowledge on process applied, data used, people involved and logic needed.
• Create the groundwork for user guided process automation (BPM & BPA)

Experience / Background

Education and Professional

• BSc or BA in supply chain management, science and/or engineering. Master or advanced degree (sciences or business) preferred
• 5-8 years of supply chain management and planning experience for a global or multi-plant CPG/FMCG company

Knowledge / Experience

• Experience in Supply Chain Management, certification in Production and Inventory Management will be a plus (APICS)
• Experience of Advanced Planning Systems (APS) (preferably E2Open or Kinaxis Rapid Response) and SAP ERP
• Understanding of Lean / Six Sigma / root cause analysis, e.g., 5 why’s
• Ability to present complex analysis in understandable forms to business stakeholders
• Ability to listen to others and link to others’ ideas
• Ability to be with the feed in the dirt when needed
• Training of others
• Fluent in English

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