United Kingdom · Operations · Senior (5-8 years)

Senior Production Planning Director

Here is the whole job, in plain words. What it is, a real day, what you decide, how you're judged, how people get here and where they go next. Then the part no course gives you: twelve AI tutors who learn your work.

Experience bandSenior (5-8 years)
Direct reportsNo direct reports
Reports toProduction Planning Manager
UK framework levelUsually a manager, or the deepest specialist in a team

Also advertised as Senior Production Planner · Lead Production Scheduler · Planning Specialist

Built on an analysis of 43,079 real UK job descriptions · grounded in qualifications employers recognise

Start with a free Future Fluency check, tuned to Senior Production Planning Director

Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this role rather than a generic one. About five minutes, and no card.

Start the check, free

1What this role really is

As a Senior Production Planning Director, you're the person who makes sure we can actually build what we've promised. You'll own the planning for some of our trickiest product lines or critical workstreams, acting as the go-to expert when things get complicated. This isn't about just following a plan; it's about shaping it, fixing it when it breaks, and teaching others how to keep it running smoothly. You're essentially the conductor of a very busy, often chaotic, orchestra.

2What you'd actually use

The tools this job runs on, and how well you'd need to know each one.

ERP/MRP Systems (e.g., SAP S/4HANA, Oracle NetSuite)Advanced

Configuring master data (BOMs, routings), troubleshooting transaction errors, building custom reports using query tools, and managing production orders.

Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) (e.g., Kinaxis RapidResponse, Blue Yonder)Expert

Building and maintaining complex planning models, defining intricate constraints (tooling, labour), running multi-scenario 'what-if' analyses, and training junior planners on the system.

BI & Data Visualisation (e.g., Power BI, Tableau)Advanced

Connecting to various data sources (ERP, MES), building new dashboards from scratch to answer specific business questions, and using DAX or calculated fields to create insightful visualisations.

Spreadsheet Software (Microsoft Excel)Expert

Mastering Power Query for data cleaning/ETL, building complex financial and operational models, writing and debugging VBA macros for automation, and performing ad-hoc analysis.

Collaboration Platforms (e.g., MS Teams, Slack, Confluence)Advanced

Setting up automated workflows and integrations (e.g., alerts from ERP), organising channels and documentation for planning projects, and ensuring clear communication across teams.

Financial & Ops Planning (e.g., Anaplan, Workday Adaptive Planning)Basic

Inputting data and running reports to understand the financial impact of your operational plans and understanding the basic connections between operational and financial models.

3What you get to decide, and how that grows

Power in a job isn't your title. It's what you're allowed to decide. Here's how it grows as you move up.

The choice	Coming in	Where you are now	The step above
Production Schedule Changes (within 2-week 'frozen zone')	Escalate to Senior Planner for review and approval.	Propose changes to Senior Planner, get approval from Production Manager.	Make technical adjustments, inform Production Manager and impacted stakeholders (Sales, Logistics) immediately. Major changes require Production Manager approval.
Inventory Parameter Adjustments (e.g., safety stock, reorder points)	Suggest changes to Senior Planner for evaluation.	Propose and justify changes to Senior Planner, implement with approval.	Define and implement parameters for your product lines, consulting Finance and Production Planning Manager for sign-off on significant changes (e.g., >10% increase in stock value).
Expedited Freight Authorisation	Escalate to Senior Planner for review and approval.	Request approval from Production Manager, providing cost/benefit analysis.	Authorise up to £5K for critical, customer-impacting shipments, informing Production Planning Manager. Above £5K requires Production Planning Manager approval.
Process Improvement Implementation	Suggest ideas to Senior Planner.	Propose and document improvements, implement with manager approval.	Design, lead, and implement process improvements for your workstreams, getting buy-in from relevant stakeholders. Report on impact and benefits to Production Planning Manager.

4How you'll be judged

The scoreboard, honestly: the hard targets, how often each one is actually looked at, and the quiet human signals that never make it onto a dashboard.

Forecast Accuracy (MAPE)

How close our production plan is to actual customer demand for your assigned product lines.

Target · Achieve <20% Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for key product families.

If the forecast for Product X was 1,000 units and actual demand was 950, that's a 5% error. We track this across all your products.

On-Time In-Full (OTIF)

The percentage of customer orders for your product lines that ship exactly when promised and contain everything the customer ordered.

Target · >98% OTIF for managed product lines.

If 98 out of 100 orders for your products were delivered perfectly, you're hitting the target. Anything less means unhappy customers.

Premium Freight Spend Reduction

Reducing the amount we spend on expedited shipping to fix planning mistakes or unexpected shortages.

Target · Reduce premium freight spend by 15% year-on-year for your assigned product lines.

If we spent £10,000 on premium freight last quarter for your products, we'd expect that to be £8,500 or less this quarter.

Inventory Days of Supply (DOS)

The average number of days of inventory we hold for your product lines, balanced against service levels.

Target · Maintain target DOS within ±5% for your product portfolio.

If the target is 30 days of supply, you're expected to keep it between 28.5 and 31.5 days, not letting it balloon or drop too low.

Stakeholder Alignment & Influence

How effectively you get different departments (Sales, Production, Procurement) to agree on and commit to a single plan, especially when trade-offs are needed.

You're regularly consulted by other department leads for planning input. Your recommendations are typically adopted. You can clearly articulate and defend planning decisions in cross-functional meetings. Other teams proactively share information with you.

Problem Resolution & Proactiveness

Your ability to spot potential issues (e.g., material shortages, capacity overloads) before they become crises and develop effective solutions.

You present solutions, not just problems. You've identified and mitigated several significant risks that would have otherwise disrupted production. You're known for having a 'Plan B' ready when the inevitable 'Plan A' goes sideways.

Process Improvement & Mentorship

Your contribution to making our planning processes better and your ability to help junior team members grow.

You've led at least one significant improvement project for a planning process (e.g., faster S&OP cycle, more accurate data input). Junior planners actively seek your advice and you've helped them tackle complex problems. You're seen as a go-to expert for technical planning questions.

5Would you like it

The honest version. What people enjoy, and what grinds them down.

What people enjoy

Solving Complex Puzzles

You get a real kick out of untangling a messy production problem—maybe it's a multi-component shortage combined with a machine breakdown, and you have to figure out the optimal way to re-sequence everything. You love the challenge of finding the 'least bad' solution.

Successfully re-planning a critical product launch after a major supplier delay, ensuring only a minimal impact on customer delivery dates.

Seeing Your Plans Executed

There's a deep satisfaction in seeing a production schedule you've painstakingly crafted actually being followed on the shop floor, and then watching the finished goods ship out the door. You like tangible results.

Tracking an order from raw material to finished product, knowing your plan enabled every step, and seeing the 'On-Time In-Full' metric improve.

Making a Tangible Difference

You want your work to have a real impact on the business, whether it's by saving money on freight, improving customer service, or optimising inventory. You're not content with just 'doing the job'; you want to make things better.

Leading a project that reduces excess inventory for a product line by 20%, freeing up significant working capital for the company.

What frustrates people

The 'Hot Drop' from Sales: Getting a call on Thursday afternoon about a 'must-win, strategic' order that needs to ship by Friday, forcing you to tear up a schedule that was painstakingly optimised for the entire week.
Fighting the ERP: Knowing the system data is wrong (inaccurate lead times, phantom inventory, outdated BOMs) and spending half your day working around it in spreadsheets instead of actual planning.
The Blame Game: When a shipment is late due to a supplier failure or quality hold that was out of your control, you are still the one who has to explain the failure to Sales and the customer. It's not always fair.
Conflicting Mandates: Being measured on minimising inventory by Finance, while simultaneously being measured on 100% product availability by Sales. You are the fulcrum of this constant tension, and it can be exhausting.
Engineering's 'Minor' Change: The engineering team makes a 'simple' component change via an Engineering Change Notice (ECN) that obsoletes £200K of existing raw material inventory overnight. You're left to deal with the fallout.
The S&OP Charade: Participating in a monthly Sales & Operations Planning meeting where a consensus plan is agreed upon, only to have it ignored by the sales team two days later when they take an order that contradicts it.

What this role does not give you

A perfectly predictable 9-to-5 day – urgent issues will crop up, especially around month-end.
Working in isolation – you're constantly talking to people, negotiating, and influencing.
A quiet, calm environment – the factory floor can be noisy, and the planning office can be intense.
Seeing every single one of your brilliant ideas make it to production – some will get deprioritised or changed.

6Who you work with

This role directly impacts our ability to meet customer commitments, manage working capital (inventory), and maintain efficient factory operations. You're essentially safeguarding our customer satisfaction and our bottom line.

Inside the business

Production Planning Manager (your boss)
Sales & Marketing Leads (they want their products, yesterday)
Engineering & Product Development (they design the stuff you plan)
Procurement & Supply Chain (they get the parts you need)
Manufacturing Operations (the folks who actually build it)
Finance (they care about inventory and costs)

Outside the business

Key Suppliers (for critical components)
Logistics Partners (getting finished goods out the door)

7What you need before you start

Not a wish list. The things you would be expected to already have.

Proven track record of independently managing production plans for specific product lines or production cells.
Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex planning issues, often involving multiple variables.
Experience in designing or significantly improving planning processes, not just executing them.
A strong grasp of at least one major ERP system (e.g., SAP, Oracle) and an APS system (e.g., Kinaxis, Blue Yonder).
Experience in mentoring or guiding junior team members, even if it wasn't a formal reporting line.
A solid understanding of the full Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) cycle and your role within it.

8What to practise next

Where the job is going, and what to do about it starting this week.

Advanced Data Modelling & Simulation

Important within 12 months. As our planning challenges grow in complexity, we'll need to build more sophisticated models that can handle greater variability and more constraints. This isn't just about tweaking existing models; it's about designing them from the ground up.

Stochastic Modelling · Optimisation Algorithms · Digital Twin Concepts · Data Engineering for Planning

This quarter: Take an online course on advanced Excel modelling or an introduction to Python for data science (focus on libraries like PuLP or SciPy for optimisation).
Next 6 months: Work with our IT team to understand the data architecture behind our ERP and APS systems.
Next 12 months: Lead a project to build a new simulation model for a specific production bottleneck, using more advanced techniques.
Continuously: Read industry journals and attend webinars on advanced planning and optimisation techniques.

Quick win: Start experimenting with the 'Solver' add-in in Excel for simple optimisation problems. It's a great way to get a feel for the concepts without needing complex software.

9Staying current once you are in

What people here do to keep up

Attending industry conferences and webinars (e.g., those hosted by ASCM, Gartner Supply Chain Symposium).
Participating in online courses or workshops on advanced planning software features or data analytics.
Joining professional networking groups for supply chain or operations professionals.
Reading industry publications and thought leadership pieces to stay current with trends.

10How the AI economy is changing work like this

Before we ask anything of you, here's what we can already say about AI and work of this kind:

The new skill this role is being asked for: Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration

Critical within 6 months—this is already happening, not future. Competitors are using tools like GPT to draft reports in 10 minutes that used to take 2 hours. Planners who figure this out will outproduce peers 3:1, no exaggeration. It's about working smarter, not harder.

We'll only ever tell you what we can actually back up. No hype, no scare tactics.

The rising capability

Zavmo analysis

What's rising in its place

This is where the work is heading, and the higher pay with it. Get fluent here and the shift stops being a threat and starts being your edge.

Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration

Critical within 6 months—this is already happening, not future. Competitors are using tools like GPT to draft reports in 10 minutes that used to take 2 hours. Planners who figure this out will outproduce peers 3:1, no exaggeration. It's about working smarter, not harder.

Context windows and token limits
Temperature settings for different tasks
RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) architectures
Output validation and hallucination detection
Prompt chaining for complex analysis

What you’ll use

Skills this role draws on

Technical

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Demand Forecasting & Management
Master Production Scheduling (MPS) & Capacity Planning (RCCP/CRP)
Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
Inventory Optimisation & Control
Lean Manufacturing Principles

The pathway

How you actually get there, here

How you become one varies far more by country than what one does. This is the UK route. Most people take one of these ways in; the right one depends on where you're starting from.

1
From Production Planner (L2)
2-4 years as a Mid-Level Planner
Skills to master
- Independently managing a full product line's plan, identifying and proposing solutions to planning issues, beginning to mentor new joiners informally.
You're ready to move on when
- Consistently hitting OTIF and forecast accuracy targets for your assigned products.
- Proactively identifying potential supply chain risks and suggesting mitigation strategies.
- Being the 'go-to' person for complex planning questions for junior colleagues.
- Successfully leading small, defined planning improvement projects.
2
From Supply Chain Analyst (Mid-Level)
3-5 years as an Analyst
Skills to master
- Deep dive into production planning methodologies, understanding factory constraints, developing strong stakeholder management skills with manufacturing teams.
You're ready to move on when
- Demonstrating a strong understanding of MRP and MPS principles.
- Successfully translating analytical insights into actionable planning recommendations.
- Proactively engaging with operations teams to understand their challenges and data needs.
- Experience with advanced data modelling and simulation relevant to production.
3
From Manufacturing Engineer (Mid-Level)
4-6 years as an Engineer
Skills to master
- Transitioning from process design to process planning, mastering demand forecasting and inventory optimisation, developing broader business acumen beyond the factory floor.
You're ready to move on when
- A deep understanding of production processes and capacity constraints.
- Demonstrated ability to optimise manufacturing workflows.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills applied to operational challenges.
- A clear interest in the commercial and supply chain aspects of production.

11Where this role leads

The long view:Your journey here is what you make it. We provide the opportunities, the challenges, and the support. It's up to you to grab them and build a truly impactful career in Operations.

Pay & demand

Pay and demand for this role will appear here, each figure traced to a named authoritative source (e.g. the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, under the Open Government Licence). We don’t show numbers we can’t attribute.

The ten Future Fluencies

Zavmo analysis

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

A qualification proves you can do the job as it's defined today. These ten are what decide whether you're still the obvious person for it in five years. They're the capabilities employers are now writing into senior roles faster than people are learning them. Zavmo weaves them through whatever you study, so you come out with both: the credential and the fluency.

The highlighted ones are the Fluencies your role leans on hardest, from how Senior Production Planning Director is actually changing. In about two minutes, the free confidence check asks where you stand on each of the ten. That's the whole check, and it's what makes the plan yours rather than generic.

12The team that's yours

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

Zavmo is a hyper-personalised AI learning platform. Twelve virtual tutors, each with a different way of teaching, and one orchestration agent that picks the right one for the moment. So every single lesson is shaped around you, your role, and the way you learn. Not a course everyone sits through. A conversation built for you, and no one else.

…and nine more, matched to you after your first chat. Meet all twelve

Start free and meet yours

13What it feels like

A conversation, not a course

Because your tutor knows your role, your projects and your last session, learning sounds like this. And it's different for every single person:

Managing Food ProductionLevel 5

Applied to your work in Senior Production Planning Director

By completing this unit, learners will be able to explain food preparation system design, plan food production, manage resources for timely operations, and monitor food production effectively.

How the thinking builds

Remember
Understand
Apply
Analyse
Evaluate
Create

An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

Your actual work Every lesson is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

DemonstrateIllustration

Evidenced on your work in Senior Production Planning Director

You do not finish by watching something. You finish by showing it on the work you already do, against the measures this job is judged on.

Forecast Accuracy (MAPE)How close our production plan is to actual customer demand for your assigned product lines.If the forecast for Product X was 1,000 units and actual demand was 950, that's a 5% error. We track this across all your products.Achieve <20% Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for key product families.
On-Time In-Full (OTIF)The percentage of customer orders for your product lines that ship exactly when promised and contain everything the customer ordered.If 98 out of 100 orders for your products were delivered perfectly, you're hitting the target. Anything less means unhappy customers.>98% OTIF for managed product lines.
Premium Freight Spend ReductionReducing the amount we spend on expedited shipping to fix planning mistakes or unexpected shortages.If we spent £10,000 on premium freight last quarter for your products, we'd expect that to be £8,500 or less this quarter.Reduce premium freight spend by 15% year-on-year for your assigned product lines.
Inventory Days of Supply (DOS)The average number of days of inventory we hold for your product lines, balanced against service levels.If the target is 30 days of supply, you're expected to keep it between 28.5 and 31.5 days, not letting it balloon or drop too low.Maintain target DOS within ±5% for your product portfolio.

These are this job's own measures, with its own targets. Nothing is marked evidenced, because nobody has started this yet. Yours would fill in from the work you bring.

Your passport

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Every credit you earn and every fluency you build adds up: evidence where it counts, carried with you. Zavmo keeps the map: where you are, where you're heading, and the next step, at your pace, around your life. From Senior Production Planning Director to To Principal Planner / Planning Lead (L4), and whatever you decide comes after.

Level 5 · in progressAI Fluency→ To Principal Planner / Planning Lead (L4)→ your design

Where this takes you

Your journey here is what you make it. We provide the opportunities, the challenges, and the support. It's up to you to grab them and build a truly impactful career in Operations.

See Your Progress GrowIllustration

Senior Production Planning Director

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Demand Forecasting & Management
Master Production Scheduling (MPS) & Capacity Planning (RCCP/CRP)
Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
Inventory Optimisation & Control
Lean Manufacturing Principles

This is your Mind Palace on learn.zavmo.ai. Every skill above comes from this role's own record, not an example borrowed from another job. A node lights up when you evidence it, and what you build stays yours between jobs. That is the part a course cannot do.

14The detail, folded away

Everything else the record holds

The career branches in full, how AI is already showing up in the day-to-day, and the questions people ask about this job. Here when you want them, out of the way while you decide.

Where it leads next, rung by rung

Where it leads

The career path, and where it branches

Senior Production Planning Director is a start, not a ceiling. Each step below asks for new skills and hands back more autonomy.

To Principal Planner / Planning Lead (L4)
3-5 years in this Senior role
You'd move from owning complex workstreams to architecting and improving entire planning systems and leading cross-functional initiatives. You might also take on formal leadership of a small team.
- Planning System Architecture: Designing and implementing new planning systems or major upgrades.
- Budget Management: Taking accountability for larger planning-related budgets (e.g., software, consultants).
- Cross-Functional Program Leadership: Leading initiatives that span multiple departments and have significant business impact.
- Risk Management: Defining enterprise-level planning risk mitigation strategies.
To Production Planning Manager (L5)
4-6 years in this Senior role
This is a shift towards formal people leadership and accountability for a larger planning function or an entire plant's planning. You'd be managing a team of planners, not just mentoring.
- S&OP Ownership: Leading the entire S&OP process for a business unit or site.
- Strategic System Roadmapping: Defining the future direction for planning technologies and tools.
- Vendor Management: Managing relationships with key planning software vendors and consultants.
- Talent Acquisition: Actively recruiting and building a high-performing planning team.

Working with AI on the job

Working with AI

Where AI is starting to help

Imagine cutting down on the tedious parts of planning, freeing you up for the really interesting, strategic stuff. That's what AI is starting to do for Production Planning, and we're embracing it. It's not about replacing you; it's about giving you superpowers.

Truth is, a lot of planning involves crunching numbers, spotting patterns, and reacting to data. AI is getting incredibly good at that, and frankly, much faster than any human. We're building an environment where you'll use AI as your personal assistant, tackling the repetitive tasks and giving you a head start on complex analysis. This means less time wrestling with spreadsheets and more time making smart decisions.

Automated MPS Generation

AI can analyse historical demand, seasonality, production constraints, and current orders to whip up a statistically optimised Master Production Schedule draft in minutes. You'll then spend your time refining it and managing exceptions, not building it from scratch. Think of the time saved!

Predictive Bottleneck Analysis

Our AI constantly simulates the forward-looking plan against known capacity and material constraints. It'll flag potential future bottlenecks (e.g., 'Machine Centre X will be over capacity by 120% in week 37') weeks in advance, giving you precious time to proactively adjust the plan before it becomes a crisis.

Supplier Risk Monitoring

AI scans global news, weather patterns, and financial reports in real-time to create a risk score for key suppliers. It can issue an alert like, 'Port congestion near Supplier B has increased 40%; recommend pulling in next Purchase Order by 5 days.' You'll be ahead of potential material shortages, not reacting to them.

Exception Report Drafting

When a plan inevitably gets disrupted, AI can instantly draft a summary report for your stakeholders. It outlines the issue (e.g., 'Work Order 123 delayed'), the root cause (e.g., 'Material 456 failed QA'), the impact (e.g., 'Customer order 789 delayed 2 days'), and even suggests a recovery plan. Less time writing, more time solving.

Common questions

How do you become a Senior Production Planning Director?

Common routes in include From Production Planner (L2) (2-4 years as a Mid-Level Planner), From Supply Chain Analyst (Mid-Level) (3-5 years as an Analyst) and From Manufacturing Engineer (Mid-Level) (4-6 years as an Engineer). Times vary with prior experience.

Where can a Senior Production Planning Director progress to?

This role can lead on to To Principal Planner / Planning Lead (L4) (3-5 years in this Senior role) and To Production Planning Manager (L5) (4-6 years in this Senior role), depending on the skills you build.

What level is a Senior Production Planning Director in the UK?

This role aligns to RQF Level 5 on the UK framework, a guide to the depth of qualification it maps to, not a hard entry bar.

What new skills matter most for a Senior Production Planning Director?

Increasingly, Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration. These are the areas where the higher-paid, future-proof work is heading.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most of them were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

What it costs

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

A single career-coaching hour costs more than a month of this, and it ends when the hour does. Zavmo doesn't. It's £70 a month, about £2.30 a day, for a companion that knows a Senior Production Planning Director, works on the job you actually do, and keeps going at your pace rather than a timetable's.

Searching and planning stay free. You only pay when you start learning.
Your credits are yours. Regulated, and they don't vanish when a subscription ends.
Cancel any time and billing stops. No notice period, no minimum term.

Your path, personalised

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.

This route runs to 12 national skill standards. That is a real journey.

Zavmo shapes a learning experience as unique as you are. It fits how you learn, your pace and the work you already do. Every step stays benchmarked to recognised national standards. That’s the plan for becoming a Senior Production Planning Director: personal to you, and it still counts. The first steps are free.

Independent research finds well-designed intelligent tutoring performs nearly as well as one-to-one human tutoring: VanLehn (2011), Educational Psychologist.

A private tutor in the UK averages £35–40 an hour . Zavmo is £70/month.

A Zavmo curriculum screen: a three-month plan of nine units, ninety credits, each one an Ofqual-regulated unit the learner can tick or untick before starting. — A real plan on learn.zavmo.ai: Ofqual-regulated units, credits, and a three-month run at your own pace.

Start free No commitment. See your first steps free.

15Where to go from here

Other roles at Level 5

Same depth of qualification, different job. Useful if the work appeals but this particular role does not.

Other roles in Operations

Stay in the field you know and move sideways rather than up.

If you leave this industry

The skills you'll gain here are highly transferable. You could move into planning or supply chain roles in almost any manufacturing industry (e.g., automotive, aerospace, food & beverage, pharmaceuticals) or even into consulting, helping other companies optimise their operations.

Not sure this is the right direction?

Work out what you actually want from work first, then come back and see which roles fit it. Takes about ten minutes.

You're not behind. You're right on time. The shift is only just beginning. Your role won't look the same in two years. Be the one who leads the change, not the one it happens to. Build my plan, free Here's the first ten minutes: a 2-minute confidence check → your personalised roadmap → meet the tutors matched to you. No card, cancel any time. No card. Build your plan, see your roadmap and meet the twelve tutors matched to you. All free. When you're ready to start learning, it's £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.

Senior Production Planning Director

What's rising in its place

Prompt Engineering & LLM Integration

Skills this role draws on

Technical

How you actually get there, here

From Production Planner (L2)

From Supply Chain Analyst (Mid-Level)

From Manufacturing Engineer (Mid-Level)

The credential is what you can do today. These are what keep you valuable.

Roles this leads to

No two people are taught the same way. This is one-to-one, not one-to-many.

A conversation, not a course

No two people run this the same way

This isn't a certificate you file away. It's a passport to the life you're designing.

Your journey here is what you make it. We provide the opportunities, the challenges, and the support. It's up to you to grab them and build a truly impactful career in Operations.

Everything else the record holds

The career path, and where it branches

To Principal Planner / Planning Lead (L4)

To Production Planning Manager (L5)

Where AI is starting to help

Automated MPS Generation

Predictive Bottleneck Analysis

Supplier Risk Monitoring

Exception Report Drafting

Common questions

You’ve started things before

Less than one coaching session. Every month.

You have the map. Walking it is the part we do together.