FPA Analyst - Chicago, IL
Finance
This is a full-time, exempt level position. 
Overview:
As part of the PetDine finance team, this employee will bring strong financial, analytical, and business process skills to partner with Commercial, Operations, Supply Chain, Performance Management CoE, GBS, HR, Pricing and other relevant teams to improve the financial performance of the Harvard, IL plant. This objective will entail several responsibilities including, but not limited to, monthly financial close, financial planning and analysis, costing and profitability analysis, inventory management, exercise of controls and continuous improvement.
One of the key goals of this employee is to create a deep understanding of costs. Armed with a good understanding of Oracle ERP, this analyst will work with the plant Oracle lead to foster discipline involving transactions in the production process, leverage Oracle data and reports to generate cost awareness, to improve operational performance and to exercise controls and compliance with established policies and processes.
Essential Functions and Primary Responsibilities:
Monthly Financial Close and Reporting

• Partner with GBS on monthly closing and provide inputs needed for the closing process (accruals, etc.)
• Prepare and present monthly plant management reporting package
• Review, analyze and validate information in the production process to ensure correct information in the closing of costs

Planning and Analysis

• Partner with Operations, Commercial and Supply Chain teams to lead the monthly planning and annual budgeting processes focusing on capacity, volumes, revenue, and costs by product category
• Review and explain variance vs forecast and use feedback loop to improve forecast accuracy
• Develop scenario analyses to facilitate decision making

Costing and Profitability Analysis

• Work with Pricing and Operations teams to create standard costs for products to generate a clear understanding of costs and profitability of products, product categories, customers, production lines etc.
• Perform costing reviews with team and improve accuracy of cost data through variance analysis
• Partner with Operations to facilitate monitoring and tracking of yield and scrap losses
• Partner with Operations and HR to have a thorough understanding of headcount and labor costs; create a labor vs throughput matrix to understand cost structure of any desired throughput level
• Monitor and optimize other key costs buckets: Maintenance, Utilities, Supplies, etc.

Inventory management

• Partner with Operations and Supply Chain to improve working capital management (mainly inventories)
• Develop / support periodic inventory reviews with attention to age of inventory, expiry / obsolescence horizon and drive improvement actions
• Leverage Oracle reports to ensure timeliness of Oracle transactions, which in turn is the bedrock of inventory accuracy
• Ensure accuracy of the physical inventory, and help investigate and resolve book to physical variations
• Review, analyze and approve possible inventory deviations vs. physical inventory taking prior authorization from Operations lead / plant management

Controls

• Ensure that the plant has an efficient internal control framework in place
• Ensure compliance with ADM policies

Continuous Improvement

• Identify cost savings opportunities
• Lead continuous improvement in the areas of costing, accounting operations and financial reporting processes and Oracle ERP usage
• Generate financial reports and KPI’s for the plant that show the deviations and the respective analyses to generate actions to optimize these KPI’s

Minimum Occupational Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Accounting, Finance, Business, Economics or related degree required
• Experience in plant or cost control preferred with previous work experience in manufacturing industry in an international organization
• Accounting experience with GAAP knowledge
• Must have a high level of initiative and independence in managing responsibilities
• Excellent analytic skills and attention to details
• Excellent MS Excel and PowerPoint skills a must
• Knowledge of Oracle ERP standard cost approach would be an advantage
• Knowledge of Operations processes (Lean, Cost trackers, KPI) would be an advantage

Excited about this role but don’t meet every requirement listed? Studies show that often applicants will self-select out if they don’t check every box. We encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this role or another one of our openings. 

ADM requires the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screen and a background check.

REF:81421BR