Manager, Short Term Planning Lead, L'Oreal Operations

Job Title Manager, Short-Term Planning

Division: Manufacturing

Location: Somerset, NJ

Reports To: AVP, MSC

Who We Are:

For more than a century, L’Oréal has devoted its energy, innovation, and scientific excellence solely to one business: Beauty. Our goal is to offer each and every person around the world the best of beauty in terms of quality, efficacy, safety, sincerity and responsibility to satisfy all beauty needs and desires in their infinite diversity.

At L’Oréal, our mission is to help everyone in their quest for healthy and beautiful skin. Our L’Oreal Dermatological Beauty division is the world leader in dermo-cosmetics by adding health to beauty. Our brands portfolio includes L’Oreal Paris, Maybelline, CeraVe, La Roche-Possay, Garnier, Thayers and SkinCeuticals which offer a range of skincare and liquid makeup products to respond to all expectations linked to beauty and health of the skin.

Team Leadership & Governance

• Lead the site-wide Short-Term Planning team, reporting to the MSC Department Lead. Set priorities, clarify accountabilities, develop team capability, and ensure consistent planning practices across the site.
• Standardize and formalize site short-term planning processes, including workflows, roles, decision rights, and supporting documentation.
• Partner with DGO to align site planning practices with global processes, support implementation of standards, and address identified gaps.
• Lead planning self-assessments and develop, track, and communicate action plans to close gaps and strengthen process compliance.

Planning & Schedule Execution

• Own the short-term planning process for processing and packaging, translating the Master Planner’s production horizon into a feasible, detailed schedule for equipment such as skids and filling lines.
• Partner with the Master Planner, Logistics Planners, UP Managers, Cell Managers, Quality, HR, and other stakeholders to validate capacity, staffing, materials, and operational feasibility; escalate capacity gaps and risks.
• Oversee schedule execution and adjustments, ensuring the team responds to actual performance and unexpected events—such as late deliveries, quality holds, or equipment constraints—while maximizing delivery against the validated plan.
• Ensure planning readiness for new-product launches and coordinate bulk supply planning for contract-manufacturing activities.

Planning Cadence

• Daily: Ensure schedules reflect prior-day performance and current constraints; production orders are released to the floor; material call-offs are triggered; and Production and Quality teams are aligned on execution.
• Weekly: Oversee schedule feasibility reviews, extension of the short-term horizon by an additional week, manpower checks, and analysis of plan adherence and root causes.
• Monthly: Ensure the team updates product master data and planning parameters, validates the Master Planner’s proposed plan, reviews the previous month’s realization rate, and agrees improvement actions with UP and MSC teams.

Performance & Continuous Improvement

• Lead performance reviews covering Weekly Net Rate, gross production, plan adherence, and root causes; agree and track corrective actions with stakeholders.
• Drive planning strategies and site improvement priorities, including ownership of the WNR Roadmap, improving UP agility, and balancing MTBR, UP EEM, and processing productivity.
• Guide strategic analysis and reporting using Power BI and AI-enabled tools where appropriate; benchmark with other sites and identify opportunities for touchless planning.
• Lead or sponsor process-improvement initiatives that strengthen planning effectiveness, schedule adherence, and operational performance.
• Present strategic process improvements, RCAs, WNR action plans to site, zone and global leadership.

Workforce, Materials & Planning Data

• Oversee workforce planning with UP Managers and HR, including forward-looking requirements for shifts, temporary labor, and weekend coverage.
• Oversee materials planning, including call-offs from external warehousing, and ensure delivery tracking and required quality controls for materials and bulk support the production schedule. Partner with Procurement, Quality, and Processing.
• Ensure the accuracy and governance of planning data and system parameters, including equipment capacity, production opening times, manpower availability, maintenance constraints, and production parameters.

Bulk Inventory & Financial Management

• Lead regular bulk inventory health reviews, identifying blocked or restricted bulk and coordinating assessment, disposition, and follow-up actions to minimize obsolescence, destructions, and other inventory losses.
• Own the monthly bulk inventory budget review, monitoring actuals against budget, explaining variances, and coordinating actions to maintain inventory within approved targets.
• Lead the year-end bulk inventory landing forecast, consolidating current inventory, demand, supply, and planned actions to provide an outlook against budget and year-end targets.

What We Are Looking For:

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering or Supply Chain discipline preferred.
• 5+ years of experience in a high performance manufacturing facility - cosmetics industry preferred.
• Advanced Excel strongly recommended (Pivot tables, VLOOKUPs)
• Must have strong written/verbal and communication and analytical skills; ability to handle multiple tasks and priorities simultaneously; manage change, provide program management and achieve results.
• Proven ability to develop short and long-range plans that meet established objectives and contribute to the overall goals and mission of the company.
• Strong interpersonal skills with ability to interface with plant and corporate personnel at various organizational levels and external suppliers.

Preferred Qualifications:

• APICS, CIPM, or NAPM, CPM certification preferred.
• Preferred experience in people management
• SAP experience preferred

What’s In It For You:

Don’t meet every single requirement? At L'Oréal, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and innovative workplace. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the qualifications listed in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways! You may just be the right candidate for this or other roles!

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and take pride in a diverse environment. We would love to find out more about you as a candidate and do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital or veteran status, medical condition or disability, or any other legally protected status.

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Our Safe Together Plan: Your safety is our highest priority. We will proceed with caution and adhere to enhanced protection standards to ensure our sites are safe for all employees. We must all operate with the shared responsibility for each other’s health & safety in mind.