Unilever International - End-to-End Supply Chain Manager

LOCATION: Manila, Philippines

UNILEVER INTERNATIONAL IS…

Unilever International is Unilever’s White Space Arm!

As the ninth global cluster, we work across the world to fill white spaces for Unilever.

We treat the business as our own.

As intrapreneurs, we introduce Unilever’s brands into white space geographies like Korea, Pacific Islands, Mongolia, and spearhead launches of iconic household brands like Dove, Lifebuoy, Sunlight, Fair & Lovely, TRESemme into big markets like U.S, China, Western Europe and SEAA.

As Unilever’s growth engine, we establish global white space businesses in key channels such as Health & Beauty, Discounters, E-Commerce and alternate channels such as travel retail, marketing to institutional partners like the United Nations, and seeding Unilever brands to overseas diaspora who crave for a taste of their familiar home brands.

Singapore is our global hub leading strategy, marketing thinking, seeding plans, and alignment with the global categories and supply chain. 

Game changing business

SPEED is the mantra for our resounding success. To serve the underserved, we embrace a founder’s mentality, explore unchartered territories, redesign end-to-end business models to establish successful businesses. We make a difference by working fast and smart, nurturing our tribe, winning together and living by five tenets:

1. We will be the fastest route-to-market globally;

2. We go where no (man, woman or distributor) has ever explored;

3. Impossible is an opinion, not a fact;

4. Speed is our currency;

5. When brands are built right, they can last a lifetime.

SC End to End Manager

The role of an End-to-End Supply Chain Manager at Unilever International involves overseeing the entire supply chain operations, including supply planning, support logistics operations, explore repacking operations & opportunities wherever applicable and customer service to ensure on-time delivery and customer satisfaction.

The key responsibilities include:

• Leadership and Strategy: Acting as a team leader for cross-functional team members, running strategy meetings, and innovation project meetings to support local and international requirements. You will influence colleagues and utilise world-class systems and tools to drive step-changes in supply planning performance

• Operational Excellence: Ensuring operations excellence and continuous productivity improvement on the daily operations and workflow management of the supply chain. Developing and enforcing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for supply chain processes, ensuring compliance with quality standards and regulatory requirements

• Planning and Inventory Management along with minimal Business wastes: Leading sourcing strategy, support innovation projects are landed on time in full in your markets, and implementing effective inventory management strategies to meet DOH (Days on Hand) targets. This includes inventory optimisation, safety stock management, and inventory control processes

• Customer Service: Managing the Order to Cash (O2C) process, driving target delivery, and developing prompt and effective action plans based on customer feedback

• Delivering Savings: Identifying and implementing continuous improvement initiatives to enhance supply chain efficiency, reduce costs, and improve overall operational performance. Conceptualising and operationalising strategies that increase speed, flexibility, and agility across the value chain

On the planning side, primary focus is to optimise the end-to-end supply chain to fully support the UI business goals for the markets handled, using Unilever Best Practice Processes and Systems.  This includes delivering the long term, volume forecasting aspects of the S&OP process, ensuring stock availability to deliver high customer service levels in the short term and in executing SC elements of the UI growth plans to introduce new products, customers, and markets in above mentioned geographies/channels as effectively as possible, while ensuring compliance with local regulations.

The E2E SC Manager is expected to lead the delivery of Customer Service Excellence and has full accountability for the order cycle and the implementation of customer service offerings, as agreed in the UI business plan. 

Responsibilities, Accountabilities, Consultation and Information

Responsibilities:

• Represent UI within the wider PMU Supply Chain for specific markets

• Act as the Supply Chain Business Partner to the Business Development Managers for respective markets

  • Support other UI teams globally with the sourcing of products from these specific market factories mentioned above by providing a point of contact for Innovation and Capacity Planning

  • Provide CS support for all UI customers in specified markets

• Ensure compliance of the UI business with key Unilever planning processes eg. Annual Planning, S&OP cycle.

• Lead the market teams to deliver key SC KPIs and high level of customer service

• Understand critical trade-offs in the extended supply chain (eg. Capacity, Stocks, Service)

• Conduct effective dialogue on assumptions and articulation of facts and evidence        

• Raise future capacity and stock issues

• Influence local company stock allocation decisions     

• Understand the financial interpretation of the constrained demand plan

  • Represent UI in the upstream Supply Chain, building and maintaining relevant relationships with Sourcing Units to deliver high performance

  • Plan for activation of new customers, markets and products in the UI business group

  • Ensure the representation of UI in RCDSR meetings, ensuring a strong “share of voice” and resulting high performance delivery from the process

  • Understand customer’s requirements and at all times seek to proactively improve delivery and make both parties supply chain’s more efficient

  • Take the lead to raise awareness and performance of KPIs such as service, stock availability, bias, inventory levels and obsoletes

Accountabilities:

• Provide robust volumes for all SKUs over a rolling 6 months horizon, which is sense checked at a category level

• Provide a realistic rolling 7-24 months volume forecast to support the S&OP process and long term capacity planning, in line with UI category assumptions

• Provide volume information and interpretation to brand and category teams to support strategic planning and activity management through the demand planners

• Provide stock management & availability processes to enable 98.5% levels customer service

• Optimise cash flow management and provide long term stock projections to support overall distribution efficiency gains

• Determine and agree key outputs e.g. constrained demand plan, costed supply plan, inventory plan

• Support the development of long term capacity plans

• Participate in the SKU rationalisation review

• Monitor KPIs covering bias, customer service and stock levels

• Manage UI inventory hub operation in the region, responsible for the stock life cycle and obsolete management of all UI SKUs

• Obsolete management (avoidance); identify obsolete risks, initiate and follow through required actions to avoid obsoletes

• Maintain Customer Satisfaction, measured by UI customer satisfaction report

• Resolution of any Customer Service issues with an appropriate level of speed and urgency

• Ensure that master data is maintained and provides accurate data for customer ship-to and sold to

Consultation:

UI Business VP/Director for the market, UI SC head for the market, Head of overall UI SC, UI SC Finance Director, UI Business Development Managers, UI SC Managers, Business Group Supply Chain, Brand Development, Legal & Tax Teams.

Key Skills and Experience Required

• Having strong experience across SC for 8+ years in both operations and team management

• Capability to operate as part of a virtual team

• Proficiency in sophisticated IT software packages to develop accurate requirements plans and a full understanding of stock modelling and regional sourcing

• Strong commitment to Customer Service through Requirements Planning, and a thorough understanding of the impact of their activity on the company and the customer’s businesses.

• Strong analytical skills and key emphasis on the requirement to undertake root cause analysis and rigorously implement improvement action plans in order to continually develop the robustness of supply chain processes linked to requirements planning.

• Strong communication as well as excellent team working skills

• Market and Customer orientation

• Business orientation

• Think opportunity, simplification and harmonization

• Consumer and Customer Focus

• Think integrated Supply Chain processes

• Analytical thinking

• Creativity