Sr Solution Architect - SAP Production Planning

Job Description

The Senior Solutions Architect is the IT business partner and systems solution expert for identifying, analyzing, translating, and documenting business requirements to solve key business issues ultimately creating IT solutions that enable the achievement of business priorities. The candidate must provide hands on expertise for designing ‘best practice’ Production Planning (PP) solutions that combine knowledge from industry experience and latest capabilities within SAP ERP ECC 6.0.  The candidate must effectively coordinate stakeholders across the business, IT, and third-party vendors.

Summary:

• Provide technical expertise on configuring SAP PP module and act as an internal expert on SAP capabilities in the Supply Chain/Operations area. 
• Researching and suggesting best practices related to various elements of Supply Chain process such as Demand/Supply Planning, Operational Planning, and Inventory Optimization.
• Share knowledge and develop relationships with on/offshore maintenance and project teams

Additional responsibilities

• Act as SME and IT project manager for small to medium sized projects in production execution and materials management.
• Research and recommend chemical industry best practices and align with key stakeholders to maintain strategic Production Execution Management IT roadmap
• Provide recommendations to leadership on applying current/emerging best practices addressing issues critical to success
• Share knowledge and develop relationships with on/offshore maintenance and project teams
• Identify, establish, and maintain business relationships with key Grace stakeholders in production execution
• Identify and manage change management needs leading to the successful acceptance of new processes and use of technology
• Translate business requests into technical and business process requirements
• Conduct workshops with technical and non-technical resources
• Lead the development within Grace SDLC framework including design, build, test, documentation and training
• Manage projects including providing status reporting, tracking budget and managing internal and external resources
• Ability to travel up to 15%

Required Skills

Expert level Supply Chain knowledge in the following technical areas:

• Must have good understanding of an integrated and end-to-end Supply chain planning process and how it links to SAP PP and linkages to MRP.
• Hands-on expertise in SAP PP (ECC 6.0)
  • Understand business requirements and configure SAP PP module to meet requirements. 
  • Understand the Financial (FI) integration as it relates to PP.
  • Understand the Material Master Data, Bill of Materials, and Recipes/Routing in a manufacturing environment. 
  • Knowledge in SAP MRP/Capacity Planning Processes, Inventory (IM), Warehouse Management (WM). 
  • Knowledge of the different Planning strategies for Production (Made to Order, Made to Stock)
• Demonstrates proven success in designing, building, and deploying SAP PP 
• Detailed understanding of SAP technical objects integration to ECC & S/4 – User exit/enhancement & Data Mapping
• Guide complex fit/gap analysis and design decisions and validate fit/gap analysis and design decisions completed by less experienced team members; ensure deviations from “out of the box” functionality have sufficient business justification and positive value proposition.
• Lead project team and workstreams from Initiation through Go live, Hypercare and Post Hypercare support
• Responsible for the Knowledge Transfer Plan and successful solution responsibility transfer to Grace
• Ability to coordinate remote teams and work effectively with an offshore, outsourcing provider
• Add Value by mentoring users in SAP Supply Chain Planning business processes.
• Knowledge of Discrete, Process and repetitive manufacturing process using SAP SCM process 

Required Experience

• Proven Experience in architecting SCM solutions
• Experience in End-to-End Implementation, support, upgrade & Supply optimization projects
• SDLC project management experience.
• 10 + years of IT experience including 5+ years with SAP PP. 
• Experience or Knowledge in SAP discrete production order process, SAP repetitive manufacturing process, and SAP PP-PI
• Experience in MRP (Materials Requirements Planning) & Capacity process.
• Experience in SAP PP Master Data (materials, BOM, recipes/routings, work centers). 
• Experience in production scheduling

Preferred Qualifications

• Good knowledge of Supply Chain processes in chemical industry
• Knowledge of other modules of SAP, such as SD, MM and PP 
• Experience in shop floor reporting/interfaces
• Experience in SAP APO or other Planning Software.
• Knowledge of other modules of SAP or SAP Processes.
  • Subcontracting, Stock transport orders, Consignment, Warehouse operations, Putaway & picking strategies, Storage bins, RF scanning, Physical inventory.
• Certification from APICS