Production Planner
Skywater is seeking an experienced, strategic Planner for a newly created role. Working with the Ops Manager and CEO, this individual will be building the production planning systems and processes from the ground up, so a demonstrable knowledge of production planning/scheduling is required.
You will own the production schedule, coordinating with manufacturing, engineering, and purchasing to schedule jobs in a low volume, custom shop tracking deliverables and deadlines, constraints such as materials and capacity, to projects enter production on time to ensure on time deliverability
This person will also play a key part in a new ERP system implementation. Prior implementation experience is desirable but not required.
Responsibilities
- Partner with the Purchaser to align material procurement timing with production need dates, with particular focus on long-lead items such as hydraulic cylinders, electrical panels, specialty steel, and other schedule-critical materials.
- Flag procurement risks early, including late vendor deliveries, material substitutions, specification changes, or competing job priorities that may affect downstream production.
- Ensure the Purchaser has clear visibility to what is needed, when it is needed, and which jobs should be prioritized when multiple projects require purchasing support.
- Build and maintain the master production schedule across all active custom jobs, sequencing work through shared departments including Saw, Fabrication, Welding, Paint, Machining, Electrical, Assembly, Shipping, and Service.
- Establish weekly and daily work priorities for each department in coordination with the Shop Foreman, adjusting in real time as job status, labor availability, material readiness, and shop conditions change.
- Balance department loading, identify scheduling conflicts early, and escalate decisions before bottlenecks or competing priorities create shop floor delays.
- Coordinate with Engineering on drawing release timing, partial releases, and production readiness, building the schedule around the realities of an engineer-to-order environment where jobs may enter the shop before engineering is fully complete.
- Maintain forward-looking visibility to shop capacity by department, tracking available hours, committed hours, backlog, and progress against the 30,000+ shop hour target to support decisions around quoting, new work, and staffing.
Desired Skills and Experience
- 7+ years of production planning or scheduling experience required, with 8 to 15 years preferred, in a job shop, engineer-to-order, or make-to-order manufacturing environment where every job is custom and schedules must be built around variable scope, resources, and priorities.
- Demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent projects with overlapping resource demands, shifting timelines, partial engineering releases, material constraints, and changing shop floor priorities.
- Working knowledge of fabrication, welding, machining, painting, electrical, mechanical assembly, and related shop operations, with the ability to understand department dependencies, estimate sequencing impacts, and identify bottlenecks before they affect production.
- Strong cross-functional communication skills, including the ability to align engineering, purchasing, shop leadership, and operations, push back constructively when priorities conflict, and escalate issues early with clarity and professionalism.
- Technology-forward planner with strong Excel, ERP, and web-based planning tool proficiency, capable of building scalable planning systems, working through imperfect data, and improving processes during an ERP transition.
- Experience in metal fabrication, welding, industrial equipment manufacturing, ERP implementation, SolidWorks or CAD-to-BOM workflows, drum-buffer-rope or theory of constraints scheduling, APICS certification, or polyurethane foaming, RIM, or composite molding processes is strongly preferred.
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Led by a group of seasoned search industry professionals, SkyWater Search Partners brings new focus to a novel concept, “Short List Search.” Our purpose is to leave a lasting impression on the clients we serve by providing individuals who will make a measurable difference in their business. We strive to consistently deliver great results to our clients in a very timely manner.
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