Production Planner & Process Automation Specialist

Production Planner & Process Automation Specialist

Ameritex Machine & Fabrication - Operations | AI-Enabled Planning & Process Automation

We’re looking for a Production Planner & Process Automation Specialist who will fundamentally change how Ameritex plans and schedules production — not just manage the existing process, but make it faster, smarter, and more automated every week. This role owns the flow of orders through production, from ERP order management to forecasting and scheduling, while continuously building the tools that make that flow more visible and less manual. We want someone who naturally asks, “There has to be a better way to do this,” and then goes and builds the solution. Ideal for someone with fabrication or manufacturing exposure who is excited to apply AI, automation, and modern system integration tools to a hands-on production environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Continuous Process Improvement (Primary Responsibility) — treat improving the scheduling and planning process as an ongoing core duty, not a side project — every week, look for ways to make production planning faster, smarter, and less manual, and act on what you find.
• Tool, Dashboard & Automation Development — build and maintain the tools, dashboards, reports, and automations (e.g., Power BI, Power Automate, SQL, Python, APIs, AI tools) that reduce manual scheduling effort and improve decision-making over time; you don’t need to master every tool on day one, but you should have the curiosity and drive to learn and apply new technology to eliminate repetitive work.
• Order-to-Cash & Cross-Functional Coordination — develop a working understanding of the company’s order-to-cash process end to end, and act as the connective link between production, quality control, sales, procurement and customer service.
• Purchasing & Materials Coordination — work closely with the purchasing team to understand how hardware, structural and sheet metal procurement, vendor availability, lead times, and materials planning affect the production schedule.
• Priority & Schedule Management — balance competing priorities across jobs and departments while protecting customer delivery dates.
• Shop Floor Engagement — spend time on the floor to understand the product and the customer; read bills of materials and interpret dimensional, construction, and finish specifications, along with quality inspection and certification criteria.
• Communication & Escalation — navigate challenging conversations between production and other business functions, report clearly to management, and represent production needs in customer-facing situations.

Preferred Technical Skills

• ERP & Product Structure — familiarity with or willingness to learn production and order tracking systems, BOM structure and product categories.
• AI, Data & Automation Tools — genuine curiosity about using AI (e.g., Claude), automation platforms, APIs, Power BI, Power Automate, SQL, and Python to eliminate repetitive work and improve decision-making; you don’t need to be an expert in all of these, but you should enjoy learning and applying them.
• Automation Platforms in Practice — hands-on exposure to SharePoint (Power Automate), API-based integrations, or similar automation platforms is a strong plus.
• Industry Exposure — experience in, or strong interest in, the machining and fabrication industry — e.g., structural and enclosure weldments, specialty end-use application weldments such as marine and aerospace environments, metal building enclosure construction, and powder coating processes.

First-Year Objectives

• Reduce time spent on manual, repetitive scheduling tasks by automating at least [X] recurring processes (e.g., data pulls, status updates, schedule rebuilds).
• Design and deploy at least [X] new tool(s) or automation(s) that eliminate a manual step in the current planning workflow.
• Improve production visibility by building live dashboard(s) (e.g., in Power BI) that give leadership real-time insight into schedule status, capacity, and materials.
• Establish new planning metrics/KPIs that didn’t previously exist, to support faster and better-informed scheduling decisions.

Role Development Path

• Foundational (0–6 months) — build fluency in the company’s product categories, ERP structure, and order-to-cash process; shadow production, quoting, engineering and purchasing to map cross-departmental dependencies; begin identifying the most time-consuming manual tasks in the current planning process.
• Growth (6–12 months) — take ownership of scheduling and materials coordination for fabrication; ship your first tools, dashboards, or automations that measurably reduce manual planning work.
• Advanced (12 months) — serve as a primary liaison across production, sales, and purchasing; lead automation initiatives that scale across product categories; own the planning metrics that guide leadership decisions; mentor others on planning tools and ERP best practices.

What Success Looks Like

• On-time delivery performance improves through better visibility into materials, capacity, and priorities.
• Manual, repetitive planning work is measurably reduced through tools and automations you’ve built — not just identified.
• Dashboards and reports you create give leadership real-time visibility into production status that didn’t exist before.
• Sales, purchasing, engineering, production, and logistics teams trust you as both a reliable point of coordination and a driver of better ways to work.