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Head of Supply Chain
Job Location:
Job Location:
Howick - South Africa
Monthly Salary:
Not provided by the employer
Monthly Salary:
Posted:
29 September 2026 (Yesterday)
Posted:
Application Deadline:
27 December 2026
Application Deadline:
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Vacancies:
Department:
Job Summary
Our Howick based food manufacturing client requires a Head of Supply Chainto own the design performance and development of the companys end-to-end supply chain from procurement through manufacturing warehousing and dispatch to delivery to store.
Key Responsibilities:
End-to-End Supply Chain Optimisation
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 groups 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Required Experience:
Director
About Company
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