Job Title: Production Planner
Location: Halle, Belgium
Normal Working Schedule: 40 hours per week
Project: Ensuring Production, Project Management and Supply Chain are aligned for smooth operations.
Start Date: ASAP
Contract Type: Freelance Contract, 12 months contract (extendable)
About the Client:
Our client is a multinational machine building company operating predominantly in the food and pharmaceutical sectors. Producing machines based on client orders, innovating through R&D and offering workshop space for clients to use their machines to create new products.
Role Overview:
We are seeking a Production Planner to be the backbone of on-time delivery, translating the project portfolio into realistic, capacity & material drive, production plans. Acting as the glue to give the whole organisation a clear, forward-looking view of what is coming, when it is coming, and what stands in the way. You should anticipate rather than react, identifying shortages, bottlenecks and critical path risks before they reach the shop floor, ensuring production, project management and supply chain are always working for the same picture.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build and maintain the integrated production plan for all assembly projects, aligned with project milestones, gates and committed delivery dates.
- Sequence and prioritise work across pre-assembly and assembly, balancing capacity constraints and material availability.
- Continuously keep the plan realistic and up to date, re-plan proactively when scope, priorities or timing change.
- Plan and level-load the available capacity (people, floor space) across the different assembly phases.
- Identify overloads, bottlenecks and idle capacity early, and propose corrective actions with operations.
- Safeguard material readiness for every production and assembly phase; run structured shortage checks and act on them.
- Work closely with Supply Chain to resolve shortages and align delivery dates before they impact assembly.
- Coordinate material picking and delivery sequencing with the warehouse so the right parts are ready at the right moment.
- Work closely with the production manager on managing the production orders and keep the production order book clean and reliable.
- Work with the production preparation team on maintaining accurate planning master data: routings, lead times and order dates as the foundation for trustworthy MRP output.
- Use SAP as the single source of truth and drive data discipline across the operational teams.
- Give clear, up-to-date visibility on the next assembly and production phases and on the critical path of each project.
- Anticipate upcoming work, flag risks and constraints in advance, and trigger the right decisions early.
- Translate complex plan into simple, visual overviews that any stakeholder (production, PMs, Supply Chain, Validation etc..) can read immediately.
- Act as the central planning point of contact between Project Management, Production, Warehouse, Validation and Supply Chain.
- Lead the recurring planning and shortage meetings; align priorities, sequencing and commitments across departments.
- Assess the impact of engineering and scope changes on the schedule and communicate the consequences clearly.
- Track and report on planning KPIs such as schedule adherence, on-time delivery and work-in-progress.
- Drive continuous improvement of planning process, tools and ways of working.
- In a nutshell, the role includes: Production & Project Planning, Capacity Planning, Material Availability, SAP & planning data, Visibility, Critical Path & Anticipation, Coordination & Communication, Performance & Continuous Improvement.
Candidate Requirements:
- Bachelor or Master’s Degree in Supply Chain Management, Industrial Engineering, Logistics or Equivalent by experience.
- Several years of experience in Production or Project Planning, ideally in project-based and CTO/ETO manufacturing (Machine Building).
- Strong, hands-on SAP Experience (S4HANA) – essential.
- Comfortable with planning tools and Excel, ideally experienced with MS Power Platform.
- Analytical and Structured, with a proven talent for turning complex plans into clear, visual overviews.
- A strong communicator and connector who keeps multiple departments aligned and moving in the same direction.
- Pragmatic, proactive and hands-on, you take ownership and drive things forward rather than wait.
- Dutch and English speaking.
Contract Details
Location: Halle, Belgium
Normal working schedule: 40 hours per week.
Duration: 12 months +
Rate type: All-inclusive Hourly/Daily Rate.