Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization
Your task as an Operational Demand Planning Manager is to drive the whole planning process and create the aligned unconstraint demand and Demand Planning Signal for designated areas of responsibility, including all sales channels, brands, and assigned categories. The Demand Planning Signal supports Purchasing and significantly influences inventory management, including out-of-stock and excess inventory, with a direct impact on sales and contribution targets.
Key Responsibilities
- Ensure high performance in the demand planning process and adhere to local and global timelines.
- Manage demand planning with SCM-APO and AFS-SCA and ensure BI reports deliver timely and accurate demand-plan output to Purchasing.
- Validate data integrity and cleanse data before forecasting.
- Resolve integration issues between upstream and downstream demand-planning systems.
- Provide demand-review information at article and aggregated levels.
- Validate Marketing range forecasts and participate in demand-review meetings focused on forecast trends and business-target comparisons.
- Define action items with business teams and drive consensus on unconstraint demand between categories and channels.
- Facilitate consensus with Marketing and Channel teams.
- Document and challenge forecast assumptions using market data, industry statistics, and market dynamics.
- Raise opportunities and risks to capture marketplace opportunities.
- Analyze and define the Demand Planning Signal based on unconstraint demand and Marketing's RMA forecast by channel.
- Define, review, adjust, and finalize the Demand Planning Signal before sending it to Purchasing.
- Review sales orders against the Demand Planning Signal at article level, ensure proper netting of orders and forecasts, and account for stock on hand in the logistics network.
- Ensure demand forecasts are regularly reviewed, aligned with channel heads, and accurately reflected in SAP.
- Participate in Buy Plan Review Meetings with Purchasing.
- Measure and report forecast accuracy at market, brand, channel, and article levels.
- Support development of causes of error to improve the overall process continuously.
Key Relationships
Marketing, Wholesale, Franchise, Retail, Ecommerce, Customer Service, Purchasing, and IBP teams.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Superior analytical skills with the ability to see the big picture while attending to details.
- Ability to derive insights from data, analyze corrective actions, and provide scenarios and options.
- Ability to act as an objective partner for commercial teams.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
- Ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment.
- Strong commercial and business acumen to challenge and drive consensus between Sales and Marketing.
- Advanced MS Excel skills; SAP APO skills are a plus.
- Fluency in written and spoken Mandarin and English is required.
Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications
- 3–5 years of demand-planning experience within a large-scale organization.
- Bachelor's degree.
- Experience in the sport or clothing industry is preferred.
Company Culture
Adidas promotes an athlete's mindset through courage, ownership, innovation, teamplay, integrity, and respect. The company emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of its culture and talent processes.