About Us:
Trilliant Food & Nutrition is a leading manufacturer of premium coffees and powdered beverages, proudly headquartered in Little Chute, Wisconsin. With a legacy rooted in quality, innovation, and service, Trilliant delivers branded and private label solutions across retail, foodservice, and e-commerce channels.
Horseshoe Beverage Company, based in Neenah, WI, is a leading ready-to-drink beverage manufacturer dedicated to delivering an exceptional beverage experience. By combining industry-leading talent and cutting-edge equipment, we drive innovation and consistently deliver the highest quality products to our customers—first and fast.
Our brand portfolio includes Victor Allen’s®, Dutch Bros® beverages and Nurri™, our better-for-you protein beverage line. We are passionate about beverages – and about building a team that’s just as energized. We invite you to explore opportunities at Trilliant or Horseshoe, to see if your talents and career aspirations may fit with our openings.
Our Core Values:
Position Overview:
The Production Planner – Co-Man plays a critical role in planning and executing production across our Co-Manufacturing network. This role converts customer demand and copacker requirements into a feasible, rolling production schedule, balancing copacker batch sizes, capacity, material availability, and changeovers to deliver on-time, in-full performance while upholding our food safety and quality standards. A central focus is dairy, our most expensive material: the Planner builds schedules that use available dairy before it expires while meeting each copacker’s batch and capacity requirements.
The Planner partners closely with the Co-Man Analysts, Procurement, Production, Quality, Logistics, Warehouse, and Customer Service to translate the supply plan into reliable execution, proactively identifying and resolving scheduling conflicts, material shortages, and capacity constraints before they impact our customers.
Responsibilities:
Production Planning and Scheduling
- Build, publish, and maintain a rolling production schedule for each Co-Manufacturing partner that supports customer service, operational efficiency, and inventory objectives.
- Convert unconstrained demand into a feasible plan based on the assumptions and requirements set by each copacker, including batch sizes, run rates, capacity, and changeovers.
- Send weekly production schedules to copackers and communicate schedule changes promptly and clearly.
- Minimize changeovers and schedule disruptions while balancing service levels, inventory targets, and cost objectives.
- Maintain schedule stability within established planning freeze periods.
- Create supply scenarios to simulate the impact of demand or supply changes.
Dairy and Material Optimization
- Plan production to consume available dairy inventory before expiration while meeting copacker batch and capacity requirements.
- Provide dairy and other material requirements to the Co-Man Analysts and Procurement in time to place and receive orders.
- Partner with the Co-Man Analysts, Inventory Planning, and Procurement to manage inventory health, including excess, obsolete, and at-risk materials.
- Identify material shortages early and work with Procurement and the Analysts on expedites, transfers, or schedule changes.
Copacker Coordination
- Coordinate with copackers to align their production schedules with company demand, quality, and delivery requirements.
- Monitor production progress at Co-Manufacturing sites to ensure timelines are met and product quality and food safety standards are maintained.
- Coordinate with the Co-Man Analysts and Warehouse on WIP and material readiness for delivery to copackers.
- Establish and maintain production assumptions for each copacker (rates, batch sizes, sequencing, changeovers, capacity) and document them.
IBP and Cross-Functional Leadership
- Lead the weekly and monthly IBP meeting, including supply and demand review, risks, and actions.
- Identify supply chain risks and align with the leadership team on appropriate actions.
- Use a collaborative, consensus-based approach with Operations, Finance, Procurement, and Supply Chain leadership.
- Communicate order status, schedule changes, and risks to Customer Service and other stakeholders in a clear and timely manner.
Performance, Analysis, and Data
- Monitor and support performance against key metrics, including schedule attainment, OTIF, inventory days on hand, copacker capacity utilization, and dairy utilization and waste.
- Update the supply and demand planning workbook with new requirements and keep it accurate and current.
- Maintain the accuracy and integrity of planning data and parameters in the ERP/MRP system.
- Analyze production data to identify trends, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement at Co-Manufacturing sites.
- Generate reports and present recommendations in a clear, user-friendly, and technically accurate format.
- Develop and maintain SOPs for planning and scheduling processes.
- Cross-train and support Co-Man Analysts as planning backup.
Interface with Co-Man Analysts:
The Planner owns the schedule and the requirements behind it; the Analysts own execution. To keep the handoff clear:
- The Planner determines what is produced, where, and when, and what dairy and materials are needed. The Analysts place and process the POs and TOs, receive material, record consumption, and confirm quantities in AX.
- The Analysts communicate material shortages, inventory discrepancies, and consumption variances to the Planner. The Planner adjusts the schedule as needed.
- Each shares schedule impacts with the other daily.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Business Administration, Industrial Engineering, or a related field, preferred (or an equivalent combination of education and experience).
- 3+ years of professional experience in production scheduling, production planning, or supply chain management, ideally in a food, beverage, or CPG manufacturing environment. Related Co-Manufacturing analyst experience may count toward this requirement.
- Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and proficiency in PowerPoint and Word.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills, and the ability to build strong working relationships across functions and with external partners.
- Outstanding organizational skills, with the ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects at once.
- Results driven, with analytical thinking, attention to detail, and the ability to troubleshoot and make decisions under pressure.
- Strength in process improvement, SOP documentation, and standardization.
- Flexible team player who thrives in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.
- Champions the organization’s values and reflects them in day-to-day work.
- Available and flexible to work overtime as needed to support the team and business needs.
- Ability to travel to Co-Manufacturing facilities as needed (10-15%)
Preferred Qualifications
- Professional certification (for example APICS/ASCM CPIM or CSCP, or Six Sigma).
- Experience with dairy or other perishable ingredient planning, or with managing co-manufacturing partners.
- Working knowledge of food safety and quality frameworks (GMP, HACCP, SQF) and how they affect production scheduling.
- Demonstrated leadership through influence, with a record of aligning resources across cross-functional projects.
What We Expect of Our Applicants and Future Employees:
- Honesty — you tell the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, and you don't hide mistakes or shortcuts.
- Integrity — you do the right thing, even when no one is watching or when it would be easier not to.
- Diversity — you respect people who look, think, and work differently than you do.
- Quality — you take pride in your work and hold yourself to a high standard, no matter the task.
- Respect — you treat everyone with courtesy, from the person next to you on the line to the person in the corner office.
- Responsibility — you follow through on what you say you'll do, without needing to be reminded.
- Accountability — when you make a mistake, you own it, learn from it, and help fix it.
Hours, Location and Pay:
We offer a competitive base pay rate and benefits package for full-time employees. This role works standard business hours Monday-Friday at our Little Chute, WI manufacturing facility. Additional hours as needed to support business needs. Travel to Co-Manufacturing facilities as needed (10-15%).
Physical and Mental Demands:
- While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, hear, use hands to type data, use a personal computer and telephone. This employee may occasionally have to operate business machines and lift and/move up to 50 pounds.
- Specific vision abilities required in this job include close vision and the ability to adjust focus. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- Mental demands include multi-tasking, decision making, problem solving, comparing, copying, computing, compiling, analyzing, coordinating, and synthesizing data.
- Potential for exposure to chemicals, heights, loud noises, mechanical equipment, wet environments, and other potential hazards exists.
Safety Statement:
At Trilliant and Horseshoe, safety is every employee’s first responsibility. We expect all employees to adhere to all safety practices, have the moral courage to stop other individuals from performing unsafe acts, and immediately report unsafe conditions.
Disclosures:
- The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities from time to time, as needed.
- Responsible for following food safety/regulatory policies and procedures, executing responsibilities as identified in standard operating procedures, and reporting food safety/regulatory concerns to the Production or Quality Manager.
- Trilliant Food & Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage Company are Drug Free Workplaces. All applicants are subject to a drug screen and background check as a condition of employment.
- Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage participate in the E-Verify process.
- EEO/AA including Vets and Disabled
- If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at HR@trilliantfood.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.
- Trilliant Food and Nutrition and Horseshoe Beverage are Equal Opportunity Employers.
- The principles of the OECD and UN have been taken into consideration and used as guidance in our human rights practices and procedures.
