Head of Supply Chain

SUMMARY:
Our Howick based food manufacturing client requires a Head of Supply Chain to own the design, performance and development of the company’s end-to-end supply chain, from procurement through manufacturing, warehousing and dispatch to delivery to store.

POSITION INFO:
Key Responsibilities: End-to-End Supply Chain Optimisation Process & Technology: Design and continuously improve end-to-end processes across procurement, manufacturing planning, warehousing, and delivery. Own the group's supply chain IT platforms, SOPs, and governance standards. Customer Service: Own OTIF performance, service level standards, and root cause resolution of service failures across all retail, corporate, and direct channels. Manufacturing Output: Drive plant throughput, utilization, and cost-effective output against plan. Lead capacity analysis and debottlenecking initiatives with the Production and Industrial Engineering teams. Financial Control: Manage Cost of Sales, warehouse stock accuracy, and inbound\/outbound transportation budgets (including carrier selection and route optimization). Inventory Management: Set stock holding policies and cover targets to optimize working capital across raw materials, packaging, and finished goods. Compliance & Quality: Partner with relevant teams to ensure operations meet health, safety, statutory compliance, and food safety\/quality standards. Leadership: Lead, develop, and hold accountable the Procurement, Production, Industrial Engineering, and Dispatch managers. S&OP Process Co-ordination Cycle Leadership: Chair the monthly end-to-end S&OP cycle to align demand, supply, manufacturing, and financial plans. Demand Forecasting: Design and manage the ERP demand forecasting platform. Track forecast accuracy and bias, holding Commercial and Supply Chain teams jointly accountable. Supply Planning: Translate demand into balanced manufacturing schedules, inventory policies, and logistics requirements. Strategic Trade-offs: Surface business trade-offs (e.g., service vs. cost) and escalate recommendations to the Commercial Director and CEO to maintain a single agreed set of data. Capability Development & Growth Future-Proofing: Align capacity, systems, people, and processes ahead of future demand curve requirements. Innovation & Channels: Support the rollout of new products, distribution networks, and routes to market (including cross-border\/export compliance and logistics). Network Design: Conduct regular reviews of plant and warehouse configurations to optimize total cost and service levels. Sponsor capital projects supporting the strategic plan. Strategic Partnerships Relationship Management: Develop strategic relationships with key supplier and customer executives based on dependency and importance. Joint Governance: Establish collaborative planning, forecast sharing, and performance reviews to secure capacity, improve availability, and lower costs. Agility & Resilience Risk Mitigation: Maintain the supply chain risk register and establish business continuity\/recovery plans for critical operational nodes. Flexibility: Drive measures to reduce lead times, enable flexible scheduling, and implement dual-sourcing or strategic stock buffers for critical items. Key Performance Areas (KPAs) Service: OTIF and customer service performance across the order-to-delivery cycle. Operations: Manufacturing throughput, schedule adherence, efficiency, and yield against targets. Inventory & Warehousing: Stock accuracy, variance levels, and working capital investment metrics. Financials: Cost of Sales and transportation costs against budget. S&OP: Cycle discipline, forecast accuracy, and bias reduction. Compliance: Safety and food quality compliance across all sites. Growth Readiness: On-time delivery of innovations, new channels, geographic expansion, and regular network reviews. Required Skills and Qualifications: 3 year degree in supply chain management, industrial engineering or similar MBA\/postgrad qualification advantageous 8-10+ years' experience in senior supply chain or logistics leadership, ideally within FMCG, food or manufacturing. Strong ERP expertise Proven experience owning and chairing a full S&OP process across demand, supply, manufacturing and finance. Experience managing multi-site warehousing, including third party\/outsourced warehouse relationships. Experience leading and developing a multi-disciplinary team spanning procurement, production\/manufacturing, engineering and dispatch\/logistics.