Lead Planner

Lead Planner

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Onsite, Full-Time 

Week 1: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Week 2: Wednesday, Thursday 

Benefits

• Up to £48,000 per annum
• 23.5 days annual leave inclusive of bank holidays
• Company bonus scheme
• Enhanced pension contributions
• Life Assurance & Critical Illness Cover
• Onsite Parking
• Discounts platform
• Long service celebrations
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Free fruit & potatoes
• Electric salary sacrifice car scheme
• Flu vaccines
• Refer a friend scheme

The company 

From our sites in Lincoln, Scotland and the Southwest, we supply some of the largest retail, wholesale and food manufacturing customers in the UK.

Our expertise goes much further than just supply and demand. We offer our customers real innovation, whether developing new potato varieties, packaging solutions or cutting-edge processes. And it’s not just fresh potatoes. We're also continually developing our great range of innovative, ready-to-cook prepared vegetables.

At Branston we thrive to be the best, through our values and invest in our people. This is a fast-paced environment and looking for someone who is adaptable in their approach.

The role

As a Lead Planner, you will play a key role in driving operational excellence by translating customer demand into efficient and achievable production plans. Working closely with the Planning team and wider operational functions, you will help maintain high service levels, improve efficiency, reduce waste, and ensure factory operations run smoothly on a day-to-day basis.

What you will be doing?

• Own and manage the end-to-end production planning process, converting demand plans into detailed, achievable factory schedules
• Create and maintain short- to medium-term production plans, balancing service, capacity, labour, and material constraints
• Optimise production sequencing to maximise line efficiency, minimise changeovers, and reduce downtime
• Manage planning for short shelf-life products, ensuring the right balance between availability and waste reduction
• Identify and manage risks to production (e.g. capacity constraints, material shortages), providing mitigation plans and escalation where required
• Lead weekly planning and scheduling reviews, driving alignment between production and supply chain priorities
• Drive continuous improvement in production planning processes, tools, and ways of working
• Monitor and improve key KPIs including service level, schedule adherence, plan attainment, and waste
• Undertake any other reasonable duties as required to support the smooth operation of the production and planning function
• Lead, coach, and develop a small team, embedding best practices and driving continuous improvement across production planning

What we want from you?

• Experience working in a production planning role within the food manufacturing sector
• Strong understanding of factory operations, capacity modelling, and production constraints.
• Experience working with short shelf-life or highly perishable products
• Experience using planning within ERP systems
• Previous experience of managing and mentoring a team

We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If you need any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.