Associate Innovation Planning Manager Dove SCL

Background & Purpose of the Job
The main purpose of the job is to orchestrate the delivery of flawless innovation plans for the Skin Cleansing Category, within North America (USA and Canada).  This role supports new product development through leading end-to-end supply chain design, and ensuring the product lands on time in full, with the highest quality and lowest cost possible.

The Associate Innovation Planning Manager will sit within the IPT team as the lead for brand specific initiatives, providing valuable insights from ideation to execution. This person will closely interact with Brand, R&D, Supply/Demand Planning, Factories, CM Ops, Finance, and Procurement to deliver the category business targets.

Who You Are
• You’re a born leader: You will have the opportunity to challenge the cross-functional team members and drive decisions to achieve one common goal
• You’re a dot connector: You will identify the impact of cross-functional process choices on up-stream and down-stream activities in the end-to-end Innovation process.
• You love to win, and have fun doing it: You will face several hurdles that will put your launch date at risk, which you will need to overcome, in order to win
• You’re a changemaker: You influence team members to develop creative solutions when things go off-course, resulting in a different way to execute the project


What You’ll Do
• Provide strategic innovation support from Start to Launch. This is achieved through helping to scope the project, defining activities and timings required to ensure capability is in place, and then providing updates to these timings throughout the project
• Lead Supply Chain functions and SC hub functions to ensure implementation of sourcing strategy, with the right capacities and capabilities to produce the innovations.
• Support complexity reduction activities and sourcing analysis for the innovation projects, by working closely with Strategic Planning and Finance 
• Coordinate required inputs to the business case for the innovation projects in terms of capital expenditure and SCC drivers, working closely with the global Procurement, Finance, Planning and Engineering teams
• Ensure delivered Quality for the innovations, maintaining Unilever safety standards
• Co-lead risk assessments, and make sure action plans are embedded in the project time plans.
• Manage communication with all key project stakeholders on project status and risks to delivery.
What You’ll Need To Succeed
• Bachelor’s degree (Business, Supply chain, Engineering preferred)
• 3 - 5 years’ experience in Supply Chain (Planning, Procurement, Manufacturing, Engineering or Logistics) or in R&D with experience on new product development
• Project management skills (working knowledge of MS Project, MS Office)
• Basic appreciation level of how manufacturing works; as well as moulds and assembly for personal care products, how they are developed and how they function 
• For office-based, Research & Development, and remote positions, proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required to be eligible for employment. Religious and/or medical accommodations will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

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