Material Requirements Planning Manager

A typical week often involves MRP run analysis, exception management, supplier coordination, and cross-functional planning meetings — reviewing planned orders against forecast and demand, working through MRP exception messages, sitting with purchasing on supplier lead-time issues, prepping reports on inventory health. You're often the operational owner of the planning engine that drives both manufacturing schedules and supplier orders.

Where it gets uncomfortable is the data-quality dependency — MRP runs only as well as the BOMs, routings, and lead times it's fed, and clean planning requires patient data-discipline work. Variance across employers is wide: at large manufacturers MRP is highly mature with ERP infrastructure; at smaller firms or job shops it may run on simpler systems with more manual intervention.

This work tends to suit people who are analytical, patient with data discipline, and diplomatic across functions. APICS CPIM, CSCP, and SAP-or-Oracle credentials anchor advancement. The trade-off is the dependency on upstream forecast and downstream supplier reliability — both can blow the plan in ways that look like MRP problems.