S&OP Country Head China
Takeda · Shanghai
Job Description
About the role:
- Own China S&OP performance and coordination across assigned market, providing leadership to S&OP personnel and translating regional direction into coordinated country plans, decisions and disciplined execution follow-through.
- Act as the primary Supply Chain point of contact for the LOC Commercial team, connecting the appropriate Supply Chain functions and leading alignment on business priorities, demand assumptions, supply and inventory risks, trade-offs, decisions and actions. Lead the Supply Chain and S&OP performance dialogue for the LOC, consolidating LOC performance insights, identifying key drivers and gaps, agreeing corrective actions and providing a clear LOC performance narrative to Regional forums.
- Responsible for Local S&OP process and Demand Planning process.
- Develop LOC S&OP team members through the talent review process, strengthening capabilities and preparing successors in line with the future GS&OP function and organizational needs.
How you will contribute:
LOC S&OP Leadership & Stakeholder Alignment
- Local S&OP cycle: Own and coordinate the Local S&OP process, including cross-functional inputs, decision preparation, actions, ownership, follow-through and escalation into the regional S&OP cycle.
- LOC Commercial interface and stakeholder management: Act as the primary Supply Chain point of contact for the LOC Commercial team, connecting the relevant Supply Chain functions and leading alignment with Commercial and cross-functional stakeholders, including Finance, Quality, Supply Planning and launch teams, on business priorities, demand assumptions, supply and inventory risks, trade-offs, decisions and actions.
- Regional integration: Translate regional priorities into LOC actions and provide timely, decision-ready LOC inputs to the Regional S&OP cycle.
- Local Demand Planning: Own the most probable unconstrained local demand forecast for the designated market, including adjustments, assumptions, risks and opportunities, and translate Commercial inputs and market intelligence into the local demand plan.
Supply Assurance, Inventory and Execution Follow-through
- S&OE coordination: Coordinate LOC-level S&OE execution and visibility, ensuring timely identification and follow-through of product-availability risks.
- Supply and inventory management: Assess inventory positions, projections and coverage against agreed targets and coordinate actions to secure availability, maintain appropriate levels and mitigate shortage, excess and obsolescence risks.
- Supply disruption response: Coordinate LOC impact assessment, mitigation priorities, country actions and escalation for significant or time-critical disruptions.
- Global and regional initiative deployment: Coordinate the deployment of relevant global and regional Supply Chain projects, launches and strategic initiatives across the LOC, ensuring local readiness, stakeholder alignment, clear ownership, milestone tracking, risk escalation and implementation follow-through. Overall project accountability remains with the designated global, regional or functional project owner.
- Escalation: Prepare and elevate unresolved issues beyond LOC authority through the Regional S&OP Lead and Head of Regional S&OP, including impact, scenarios, trade-offs, recommendations and required decision.
- Local planning discipline: Maintain planning data quality, controls, forecast documentation, calendar adherence and adoption of Regional Demand Planning and S&OP standards.
- Independent challenge: Ensure material assumptions, forecast changes, inventory exceptions and cross-country trade-offs affecting the designated market are subject to appropriate challenge by the Regional Demand Planner, Regional S&OP Lead or another designated peer.
- Scope boundary: Own LOC-level inventory planning, visibility, target and coverage assessment, decision coordination and action follow-through. Operational Logistics, Distribution, warehousing, transportation, Customer Service and management of local 3PL/4PL providers remain outside the role.
Leadership, Performance and Capability
- People leadership: Lead, coach and develop assigned resources in line with the confirmed organizational structure.
- LOC performance dialogue: Lead the Supply Chain and S&OP performance dialogue for the LOC, LOC performance insights, identifying key drivers and gaps, facilitating agreement on corrective actions and ensuring clear ownership and follow-through. Provide a clear LOC performance narrative, including material risks, opportunities, actions and support required, to the relevant regional forums.
- Capability: Build Demand Planning and S&OP capability and execution discipline across LOC team members.
- Functional coordination: Operate within the delegated functional coordination model led by the Regional S&OP Lead and the Demand Planning methodology led by the Regional Demand Planner.
- Continuous improvement: Identify recurring performance and process gaps and coordinate LOC-level improvement actions, adoption of standards and sharing of good practices.
Minimum Requirements/Qualifications:
- Degree in Supply Chain, Business Administration, Engineering or a related field.
- Relevant Supply Chain or S&OP certification preferred.
- Typically, 7-10 years of relevant Supply Chain planning and operations experience.
- Strong communication skills to manage stakeholders across levels & across countries
- Good leadership, networking and influencing skills