Production Planner
Location: Johannesburg or Durban
Contract: Permanent
Closing Date: 18th February 2026

About Us

With over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries, we're the world's leading premium drinks company known for our wonderful collection of iconic brands such as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, Guinness and more. Bring your passion and use your curiosity as you explore, collaborate and innovate to build brands consumers love. Together with passionate people from all over the world, you'll test new ideas, learn and grow, and unlock a brighter, more exciting future. Join us to create a career worth celebrating!

About the Function:

Our Supply Chain and Manufacturing team are problem-solvers, sourcing, producing, and delivering our much-loved brands to delight customers around the globe. Over half of Diageo's 30,000+ people work in Supply Chain and Manufacturing. It's an intricate and sophisticated operation that's the product of logistical, manufacturing, and technical collaborations.

Our teams in 100 sites in over 30 countries cover production facilities, supplier relationships, customer collaborations and third-party agreements. We're committed to realising our 'Society 2030: Spirit of Progress' goals, to protect the environment and support our farmers and suppliers. Whatever your skills and experience, we'll help you to thrive in our inclusive culture.

About the Role:

As a Production Planner within our Materials Planning Africa team, you will play a critical role in managing the end-to-end supply chain network across production sites and third-party partners. Your primary focus will be to develop a reliable, insight-driven production plan that meets consumer and customer service objectives while ensuring optimal production and distribution efficiencies.

You will balance market demand with operational capabilities, perform medium- to long-term capacity planning, and recommend solutions to resolve potential imbalances.

You will be measured across key KPIs at both country and Africa levels, including Days Forward Cover, Inventory as a Percentage of NSV, Inventory Turns, SLOBS, write-offs, capacity utilisation, and overall production plan stability.

Key Responsibilities:

Production Planning

• Drive the production planning process, ensuring the creation of feasible and robust plans that meet market requirements.

• Manage the supply network plan (frozen period to planning horizon) for the assigned business area to deliver target OTIFNE service and inventory levels.

• Translate demand signals into an achievable production plan that meets customer expectations.

• Produce weekly and monthly reporting, including KPIs, health trackers, risk assessments, and SKU exceptions.

• Collaborate with Production Site Management and schedulers to ensure seamless execution of plans.

• Address supply disruptions through consensus-driven solutions or escalation where required.

• Support innovation by aligning production planning to new product launches and improving speed to market.

• Identify risks and opportunities across the supply plan and communicate these effectively to stakeholders.

• Conduct root cause analysis across multiple information streams to support codification and continuous improvement.

Data Management

• Maintain and update planning parameters within SAP APO to ensure accurate and reliable planning outputs.

• Ensure operational capacities, constraints, and resources are accurately reflected in the system.

• Continuously review demand signals within the planning horizon and adjust planning assumptions accordingly.

• Evaluate batch sizes, cycle frequencies, MOQs and stock levels to drive optimal market availability.

S&OP Leadership

• Represent Supply Planning within the S&OP process, ensuring supply and demand are effectively balanced.

• Lead the Market Supply Review for your assigned market, providing clear insights and recommendations to support decision-making.

Capacity Planning

• Regularly reassess production site capacity and highlight constraints or potential issues to the Supply Planning Manager and local market stakeholders.

• Recommend solutions to mitigate capacity imbalances and protect service levels.

Innovation & Inventory Management:

• Monitor innovation inventory levels on an ongoing basis.

• Partner with Supply and Commercial teams to manage stock-outs, stock breaches, and exceptional scenarios.

• Identify potential SLOBs, assess risks of write-offs, and input findings into the S&OP cycle.

About You

You are a motivated and analytical professional who thrives in a dynamic supply chain environment and enjoys turning complex demand and supply challenges into achievable plans. You bring both experience, curiosity and are eager to contribute to delivering excellence across our Materials Planning Africa team.

• Supply Network Planning (Production and Distribution) experience in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry preferred

• Experience with advanced planning software within Supply Planning (SAP APO preferred)

• Experience working in a centralised planning function preferred

• Understanding of end-to-end Supply Chain Planning processes, including Supply Planning, Distribution Requirements Planning, Inventory Planning, Conversion, Logistics, Procurement, and Customer Service

• Demonstrated proficiency in statistics and/or forecasting methodologies, with an understanding of their financial and operational impacts

• Strong analytical, organisational, and decision-making skills with a growth mindset

• Good communication skills - verbal, written and presentation

• Proficient in MS applications, e.g., Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook

Working With Us:

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this. We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you'll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You'll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences, mindsets, and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world.

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you!

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