Birgit FORTUNE

Working on short and long term plans for procurement and in-house production of company stock and full-filling contract customer requirements. Part of the cross functional NPD team, helping source new products & components and new suppliers. Managing the procurement team.

Responsible for the forecasting of long and short-term production & labour demands for the manufacturing site and planning of 3rd party bottlers where required due to volume or geographical constraints. Responsible for schedules for the manufacturing site, optimising inventory and meeting customer delivery service. Member of Site Management Team. Reporting, Analysis and Continuous Improvement Lead on procurement tendering of NPD and current dry goods.

Key member of team setting up new company owned bottling, cask and cased goods warehouse site. Responsible for coordinating SMWS and JGT bottlings across 6 x 3rd party bottlers, in the UK and USA. Demand Forecasting, based on historical sales data, forecasting bottling and dry goods requirements on a 3-year rolling basis. Dry Goods Forecasting, Procurement and QC.

Responsible for receiving, processing, scheduling and invoicing bottling orders from more than 30 external customers. Orders varied from large bulk order to those for very small luxury products.

• Design and manufacture of ‘prototype’ packaging and labels using Adobe Illustrator for new product lines to present to key customers during product development. This allows the customer to have an ‘on the shelf’ experience of products in development. • Designed and maintained a Nutritional Calculation component to the Costings System and supporting Nutritional Database. This enabled the estimation of Nutritional Values by the product development team, improving speed and efficiency. • Co-ordinate and create props for Innovation Days. • Built and maintained the on-site development intranet page • Researched and wrote trip reports and presentations for senior manager. • Supply data analysis of products launched and nutritional/health values. • Supporting different project teams.

• Converted Development Recipes to use them in the site database and planning systems. • Designed a product costings system that was user friendly and robust enough to last from 2004 until 2017. • Worked out detailed labour costs for all factory processes. • Responsible for training new staff in the costings system and keeping it up to date. • Provided Launch analysis and commercial analysis reports.

• Managed a team of 2 logistical, scheduling and process planners. • Provided planning component of the inter-departmental team implementing the site ERP and MRP systems. • Daily & Short-term factory packing scheduling and ingredient preparations for 65 SKUs. • Analyzed historical orders to create short and long term forecasts. • Daily communication with external customers concerning orders, despatch information and commercial information

Bilingual telephone and email customer service role & trainer of new recruits.

• Responsible for live bird supply into 2 factories. Liaising directly with the factory and farm managers to determine which birds are suitable to meet the 6 different weight categories required. • Scheduling and time management of 5 catching teams.

• Forward planning role to determine long-term issues and fitting them into daily planning of chick and egg production. • Maintaining good communications between suppliers, farm and hatchery managers.

• Responsible for the operational planning of chicken and egg production at over 60 farms in Scotland and Northern England. • Maintaining good communications and responding where appropriate to feedback from suppliers, buyers, farm and hatchery managers. • Involved in creation of annual budget • Responsible for tendering spent hens.

Assistant to the Agricultural Planner