Transportation Planner

The Transportation Planner is responsible for the day-to-day management of freight and carrier execution throughout the supply chain. This position ensures that transportation is planned to balance service and cost, while maintaining strong relationships with carriers, customers and the Post Consumer Brands’ (PCB) supply chain. This position leverages data to develop logistics solutions that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of PCB to support company objectives.

This position interacts with:

• Customer Operations – to meet and analyze customer expectations for on time delivery
• Supply Chain Planning – to communicate costs associated with deployment and assist in repositioning
• Distribution – to create shipping schedules that can be executed and act as a liaison with carriers
• Purchasing – to meet delivery expectations of inbound materials and ingredients
• Manufacturing Operations – to ensure appropriate equipment is available to most efficiently support plant production

• Hybrid -
  • Onsite 3 days a week at our Lakeville, MN headquarters. Remote opportunity 2 days a week.
• Weekend coverage required as well: 5-6 weekends a year and covering one holiday – hours are Saturdays and Sundays 8-5 and then would get one comp day the following week.

• Customer Focus
• Achieve and maintain alignment in the value chain between suppliers, PCB and the Customer
• Effectively and efficiently manage freight orders by providing appropriate communication to PCB internal customers, PCB freight vendors (carriers) and PCB external customers.
• Technical / Functional Expertise
• Transportation Planning
• Run transportation routing and scheduling plan daily, including Customer deliveries, plant transfers, inbound materials and other freight movements for the company.
• Use the Transportation Management System (TMS) to manage capacity across carriers, lanes, PCB facilities, and customers to maintain service and cost metrics.
• Local Facility Transportation Liaison
• Support assigned facilities as a liaison between sites and freight vendors.
• Manage trailer pools.
• Provide information and analysis of Transportation metrics to Transportation Management, Supply Chain stakeholders and vendors.
• Monitor and evaluate key performance indicators for freight vendors and manage vendor actions to improve upon these key metrics.

• Technology – Provide feedback regarding system performance and offer solutions to improve systems, procedures, or operating standards.
• Results
  • • Create transportation plans that control costs, meet customer service requirements and manage transportation carrier capacity.
    • Report on key performance metrics, including but not limited to: On-Time Delivery to Request Date, and On-Time Delivery to 1st Appointment, On Time Pick Up and Primary Tender Acceptance
    • Identify and quantify opportunities in transportation and logistics to reduce supply chain costs and improve service.
• Act
  • • Develop strong relationships with transportation vendors and internal PCB contacts.
    • Proactively establish and implement countermeasures to negative performance trends, industry cycles and network disruptions.
• Organization and People Development
  • • Development – Develop yourself against the competency profiles for successful individual contributors at PCB.
    • Represent the PCB transportation function as a professional and viable resource for the company to customers, both internally and externally.

• Broad knowledge of logistics processes and planning systems.
• Cost control, cost: benefit analysis and the implementation of productivity improvements.
• Good communication and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated good business judgment; good understanding of economic principles affecting decisions related to transportation.
• Good understanding of modes of transportation (over-the-road full truckload, intermodal and less-than-truckload), shipping lanes and material handling.
• Ability to use technology as a decision support tool.

One to three years’ experience operating in a supply chain-planning environment in areas of operations, materials management, transportation planning, carrier management or warehousing.