Director of Planning and Production Coordination

SUMMARY OF RESPONSIBILITIES

The Director of Planning and Production Coordination leads enterprise planning and production coordination across CSP, Tank and Structural product lines. The role establishes consistent planning standards, aligns demand with capacity, ensures production readiness, balances workloads across sites and supports reliable customer commitments. The role owns the planning system and coordination processes.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS

• Embrace and demonstrate the qualities of the TrueNorth Steel Game Changer definition.
• Comply with all safety, quality, environmental and workplace requirements.
• Lead, coach, and develop the CSP, Tank and Structural Planning Leaders and the Production Coordinator Supervisor, establishing clear expectations, accountability, and succession coverage.
• Establish and continuously improve an integrated planning and production-coordination system with common standards, planning horizons, terminology, decision rights, data requirements, and escalation paths.
• Align customer demand, forecasts, backlog, inventory, labor, equipment, material availability, and site capability into executable production plans.
• Confirm customer commit-date feasibility using verified readiness, material, capacity, outside-processing, site, and delivery information.
• Provide an enterprise view of capacity and constraints, leading approved workload-balancing actions such as site transfers, priority changes, outsourcing, overtime, and staffing adjustments.
• Define and enforce production-readiness requirements for drawings, bills of material, routing, material, CNC and nesting information, quality requirements, outside services, job packets, shipping information, and approvals.
• Lead regular site, product-line, and enterprise planning reviews that surface demand, capacity, backlog, readiness, schedule performance, risks, and decisions requiring action.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Sales, Project Management, Estimating, Drafting, Engineering, Purchasing, Inventory Control, Quality, Shipping, Logistics, Finance, and other functions to resolve planning constraints.
• Govern planning and production coordination data and transactions in SyteLine, Tekla and other approved systems, including capacity assumptions, work-center data, production status, and readiness information.
• Define performance measures and dashboards for schedule, backlog, capacity, readiness, equipment use, changes, and failure-related costs. Use data to improve delivery, throughput, material utilization, and profitability.
• Establish repeatable standard work, documentation, training, cross-training, and backup coverage to reduce dependence on individual knowledge.
• Serve as the escalation point for significant cross-site, cross-product, and cross-functional planning issues. Elevate unresolved matters with facts, alternatives, risks, and recommendations.
• Support annual business, capacity, capital, workforce, and budget planning, along with strategic manufacturing initiatives.
• Provide the VP of Manufacturing with regular updates on planning risks, delivery, capacity, material, organizational needs, trends, and recommended actions.
• Travel to manufacturing sites is required to understand processes, build relationships, support teams, and ensure consistent implementation of planning and production-coordination standards.
• Prompt and dependable attendance.
• Other duties as assigned.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND QUALITIES

• Strong knowledge of manufacturing planning, scheduling, capacity management, production coordination, inventory, and shop-floor execution.
• Ability to lead leaders and standardize planning processes across multiple manufacturing sites or business units.
• Working knowledge of ERP-supported planning, bills of material, routing, work centers, job release, inventory, and production transactions.
• Strong analytical judgment and ability to balance customer commitments, manufacturing capability, cost, and business risk.
• Effective communication, facilitation, change leadership and cross-functional influence skills.
• High integrity, accountability, attention to detail, sound judgment, and bias toward action.
• Commitment to safety, quality, customer service, teamwork, and continuous improvement.

EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Engineering, Manufacturing, Business Administration, Construction Management or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant work experience.
• Minimum of ten years of progressive responsible experience in manufacturing operations, planning, scheduling, supply chain, project coordination, or a related field preferred, including five years of leadership experience.
• Experience leading multi-site planning or operational processes, ERP-supported planning and cross-functional improvement preferred.
• Experience in steel fabrication, metal manufacturing, project-based manufacturing, or a related industrial environment preferred.