Demand Planner at Lamb Weston in Kennewick, WA, USA (Kennewick Office)

Job description

• The Demand Planner develops a forward-looking, insight-driven consensus demand plan that enables better decisions across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Planning, Operations, and Customer Service. The role integrates statistical forecasting, commercial intelligence, customer insights, external market signals, and AI-enabled planning recommendations to identify risks, opportunities, and decision points. The Demand Planner serves as a demand insight leader, scenario evaluator, and cross-functional decision partner. The role owns upstream signal capture, assumption management, and commercial input governance to strengthen the quality and credibility of the consensus demand plan and support service, inventory, capacity, revenue, margin, and financial commitments.

Responsibilities

• Demand Insight & Consensus Planning
• Develop and maintain a rolling consensus demand plan using statistical models, customer inputs, commercial assumptions, external signals, and system-generated recommendations.
• Facilitate cross-functional demand conversations focused on assumptions, risks, opportunities, and decisions needed.
• Challenge forecast inputs and commercial assumptions using data, trends, and business context to maintain an unbiased enterprise view of demand.
• Scenario Modeling & Decision Support
• Build and evaluate demand scenarios for upside, downside, constrained supply, customer shifts, promotions, and market changes.
• Quantify implications across service, inventory, capacity, revenue, margin, and financial commitments.
• Translate analysis into clear recommendations, trade-offs, and decision options; escalate material changes through S&OP, S&OE, or Integrated Reconciliation as appropriate.
• Data, Analytics & Digital Planning
• Use advanced planning tools, dashboards, AI-enabled forecasts, alerts, analytics, and scenario models to prioritize exceptions and improve decision quality.
• Apply a trust-but-verify mindset to system recommendations, challenging outputs when assumptions, data, constraints, or logic appear incorrect.
• Identify opportunities to automate routine planning activities and partner with the Planning COE and technology teams to improve workflows, tools, and adoption.
• Stakeholder Management & Business Storytelling
• Partner with Sales, Marketing, Finance, Customer Service, Supply Planning, and Operations to align on the demand outlook.
• Translate complex data into concise business narratives that clarify what changed, why it matters, and what decision is needed.
• Build trusted relationships while maintaining objectivity, constructive challenge, and enterprise-first decision-making.
• Forecast Performance, Governance & Continuous Improvement
• Monitor forecast accuracy, bias, forecast value add, demand volatility, and key planning assumptions; conduct root cause analysis on misses and recurring exceptions.
• Capture upstream demand signals and document the source, timing, magnitude, expected impact, and owner of material assumptions and commercial inputs.
• Govern commercial inputs by challenging source, timing, magnitude, duplication risk, and alignment to the enterprise demand view; track assumption realization and recommend process, data, system, or behavior improvements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Analytics, Finance, or a related field required.
• ASCM inventory or CPIM coursework or certification is a plus.
• 5–8 years of experience in Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning, Sales Forecasting, or Integrated Business Planning.
• Experience facilitating cross-functional planning processes, consensus forecasting, upstream signal capture, assumption management, and commercial input governance.
• Strong analytical skills with experience in statistical forecasting, scenario analysis, root cause analysis, and business analytics.
• Experience with advanced planning systems such as Kinaxis Maestro, SAP IBP, SAP APO, Oracle, o9, Blue Yonder, or similar platforms.
• Experience using Power BI, Tableau, Excel, SQL, or other analytical tools.
• Strong business acumen and understanding of how demand decisions affect service, inventory, operations, revenue, margin, and financial performance.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence without direct authority in a matrixed organization.
• Demonstrated ability to manage ambiguity, prioritize competing demands, own critical demand data and assumptions, and apply a trust-but-verify mindset to system-generated recommendations.

Skills

Required

• Statistical forecasting
• Scenario analysis
• Root cause analysis
• Business analytics
• Power BI, Tableau, Excel, SQL
• Strong business acumen
• Manage ambiguity
• Prioritize competing demands
• Trust-but-verify mindset

Preferred

• ASCM inventory or CPIM certification

Benefits

• Coupled with our compensation and bonus incentive programs, our benefits deliver rewards that are market competitive. Some of the most attractive elements of our benefit programs include:
• Health Insurance Benefits - Medical, Dental, Vision
• Flexible Spending Accounts for Health and Dependent Care, and Health Reimbursement Accounts
• Well-being programs including companywide events and a wellness incentive program
• Paid Time Off
• Financial Wellness – Industry leading 401(k) plan with generous company contributions, Financial Planning Services, Employee Stock purchase program, and Health Savings Accounts, Life and Accident insurance
• Family-Friendly Employee events
• Employee Assistance Program services – mental health and other concierge type services
• Benefits may vary based on location, job role/level, job status, and/or the terms of any applicable collective bargaining agreements.
• In compliance with applicable state and local laws, Lamb Weston has opted to include a reasonable estimate of the compensation for this role. This compensation is specific to this position and takes into account a number of variables. Actual compensation may be higher or lower in the range posted based on various factors, including, but not limited to, job duties, experience and expertise. A candidate's work location could also impact the actual compensation being outside of the range to reflect local cost of labor. A reasonable annual estimate of the range for this role is listed below.
• Pay Rate or Range: $71,410.00 - $107,110.00