Supply Chain Manager

The Role:

We're looking for an experienced and people-focused Supply Chain Manager to own Service at Little Moons – from the production plan right through to our customer's door.

This is a big, broad leadership role. You'll lead a team of six across planning, customer supply chain and inventory, and you'll be the single owner of Service across the business: setting the targets, owning the availability message, and getting to the root cause whenever something goes wrong – wherever in the chain it started.

Planning and supply chain expertise is important, but this role is about much more than running a great plan. You'll be the connector between Planning, Customer Supply Chain, Logistics and our 3PL partners, working hand in hand with Commercial, Operations and Demand Planning to turn different priorities into one clear, deliverable plan. You'll also play a key part in helping our Head of Supply Chain & Procurement bring the function together as one end-to-end team.

This is a role for a supply chain leader who loves building and developing teams, sees the bigger picture, is commercially sharp, and stays calm and decisive when the pressure is on.

Key Responsibilities:

You’ll be the single owner of Service at Little Moons

• Setting, publishing and defending customer service targets for all UK and international customers

• Owning root cause analysis and corrective action for every service failure, wherever it originated in the chain

• Chairing the weekly Service review with Commercial, Operations and Demand Planning, escalating risk with a clear recovery plan

• Owning the availability message to the business

• Being the named escalation point for customer supply chain teams and 3PL partners

Planning – Departmental Leadership

• Lead the Planning department, setting the planning strategy, structure, standards and ways of working. Accountable for the quality and outcome of the plan.

• Develop and own the medium and long-term capacity plan, translating demand forecast and budget volumes into line, labour, equipment and storage requirements, and flagging constraints, bottlenecks and investment needs.

• Model capacity scenarios for NPD launches, promotional activity, peak trading and new market entry, advising the business on what is deliverable and by when.

• Set inventory policy and strategy, including safety stock levels, days cover targets and the service/stock/cost trade-offs across existing lines, launches and phase-outs.

• Govern the weekly and daily planning process – review, challenge and sign off the plan, intervening on exception, escalation and conflict rather than routine scheduling.

• Own planning system and master data integrity, and lead planning system development, automation and continuous improvement projects.

• Build planning capability through coaching, clear delegation and succession planning, ensuring resilience and cover across the department.

Supporting S&OP

• Provide the supply-side input into the S&OP process (owned by the Demand & S&OP Manager), ensuring the supply and capacity position is accurate, robust and decision ready.

• Reconcile the supply plan to the agreed demand plan, escalating gaps early and proposing mitigation where demand can’t be met in full.

• Partner closely with the Demand & S&OP Manager on a single, aligned view of demand, supply and inventory, driving improvement in forecast accuracy and plan stability.

• Translate S&OP outcomes into executable production, inventory and logistics plans, and hold the team accountable for delivering them.

Customer Supply Chain & Service

• Own sales order processing, the EDI function and export process management, ensuring accurate, on-time order capture and dispatch.

• Manage relationships with customers’ supply chain teams, implementing regular joint review meetings and collaborative planning.

• Develop and maintain KPI reporting with clear commentary and actions.

• Lead customer-facing projects including EDI implementation, new customer onboarding and process/systems development.

• Support Commercial with promotional and NPD launch readiness, ensuring phasing, volumes and stock builds are agreed and deliverable.

Logistics, 3PL & Cost to Serve

• Manage the day-to-day relationship with our 3PLs in the UK, EU and other distribution partners, holding formal review meetings against SLAs and service targets.

• Own 3PL performance management, including stock accuracy, dispatch compliance, claims, cold chain integrity and continuous improvement plans.

• Alongside the Head of Supply Chain & Procurement, own the logistics and distribution cost budget, including forecasting, variance reporting and delivery of agreed savings targets.

• Own finished goods inventory control across all locations, including stock accuracy, shelf life management, returns and obsolescence.

Leadership & Functional Strategy

• Lead, support, mentor and develop a team of six across planning, customer supply chain and inventory, identifying training and development needs so the team is fit to support Little Moons’ growth.

• Support the Head of Supply Chain & Procurement in driving a single, end-to-end function – breaking down silos, improving collaboration and embedding consistent ways of working.

• Drive excellence, best practice, operational controls, cost savings and service improvements across the end-to-end chain.

• Own the supply chain risk register for planning, inventory and logistics, maintaining contingency and business continuity plans for capacity, storage and distribution disruption.

• Contribute to the Brighter Future Sustainability Strategy and company’s linked OKRs.

• Support your function and any direct report(s) to contribute too.

How Success Is Measured:

• Customer Service Level

• Fill rate and credit claims / service-related deductions

• Conformance to plan, plan intervention and revisit rate, plant efficiency

• Capacity plan accuracy and forward visibility of constraints

• Supply plan accuracy and quality of S&OP input; alignment to the agreed demand plan

• Finished goods inventory level, days cover, stock accuracy and obsolescence / write-off

• 3PL SLA performance and cost to serve

• Delivery of logistics budget and agreed cost savings

• Team engagement, capability development and succession cover

Essential Requirements:

• A strong, people-first leader with experience leading a planning function within FMCG, food or chilled/frozen manufacturing, alongside customer-facing supply chain responsibility

• Demonstrable experience of capacity planning and contributing to a formal S&OP process at a strategic level, not just execution

• Proven ownership of a customer service KPI (OTIF/CSL) and a track record of improving it

• Experience managing 3PL partners, negotiating and reviewing SLAs, and owning a logistics cost budget

• A track record of leading multi-disciplinary teams and bringing separate teams together into one way of working

• Strong ERP/MRP and Excel capability, with the ability to turn data into clear decisions and commercial insight

• Excellent stakeholder influencing skills, with the confidence to engage senior leaders across Commercial and Operations

• Resilient, calm under pressure and comfortable making decisions with incomplete information