What are the responsibilities and job description for the Production Scheduler position at Kratos Industries, LLC?
Description
Position Overview
The Production Scheduler is responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimizing the production schedule to meet customer demand, maximize resource utilization, and ensure on-time delivery. This role has a strong focus on capacity scheduling and capacity forecasting, balancing workloads across assembly lines, equipment, and labor resources. The Scheduler acts as the critical link between Sales, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Production teams to ensure that schedules are realistic, achievable, and aligned with business objectives
Key Responsibilities
Capacity Scheduling
Position Overview
The Production Scheduler is responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimizing the production schedule to meet customer demand, maximize resource utilization, and ensure on-time delivery. This role has a strong focus on capacity scheduling and capacity forecasting, balancing workloads across assembly lines, equipment, and labor resources. The Scheduler acts as the critical link between Sales, Supply Chain, Engineering, and Production teams to ensure that schedules are realistic, achievable, and aligned with business objectives
Key Responsibilities
Capacity Scheduling
- Develop and manage detailed production schedules for assembly operations.
- Balance demand against available capacity for work centers and labor resources.
- Identify bottlenecks, conflicts, or underutilized resources and propose corrective actions.
- Sequence jobs to minimize setup time and maximize throughput.
- Build and maintain capacity models to forecast workload weeks and months ahead.
- Partner with Project Management to align forecasts with customer demand.
- Provide leadership with clear reporting on projected resource utilization and potential constraints.
- Support strategic planning by forecasting labor and equipment needs for upcoming demand.
- Adjust schedules in response to changes such as material shortages, resource constraints, or customer priority shifts.
- Collaborate with procurement to ensure materials availability aligns with planned production.
- Maintain accurate scheduling data within ERP/MRP systems.
- Communicate schedule updates to production supervisors, coordinators, and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Drive process improvements in scheduling and forecasting accuracy.
- Develop tools and reports for visibility into schedule adherence, lead times, and capacity trends.
- Participate in Kaizen and continuous improvement activities related to planning and production efficiency.
- Bachelor’s degree in operations management, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, or related field (preferred).
- 3–5 years of experience in production scheduling, capacity planning, or manufacturing planning within an OEM or assembly environment.
- Strong knowledge of ERP/MRP systems and production scheduling tools.
- Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret demand, capacity, and lead time data.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills across cross-functional teams.
- Proven ability to manage multiple priorities and adapt quickly to change.
