Master Scheduler

About the role

Star Manufacturing is seeking an experienced Master Scheduler to lead production planning and scheduling within our complex, high‑mix manufacturing environment. This critical role translates customer demand into a realistic and executable production plan across multiple product families, production lines, and shared manufacturing resources. The Master Scheduler serves as a key connection between Operations, Supply Chain, Purchasing, Sales, Customer Service, Engineering, and Production, ensuring customer requirements are balanced with material availability, labor, equipment capacity, inventory, and manufacturing capabilities. The position requires understanding the entire demand‑to‑delivery process, anticipating constraints, analyzing competing priorities, and proactively identifying solutions before issues impact production or customers.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and communicate the master production schedule across multiple product families and production areas.
• Translate customer orders, forecasts, backlog, and inventory requirements into an executable production plan.
• Balance a complex product mix against labor, equipment, material availability, manufacturing capacity, and customer priorities.
• Analyze short‑ and long‑term capacity requirements and proactively identify bottlenecks and resource constraints.
• Partner with Purchasing and Supply Chain to identify material shortages and ensure production schedules align with material availability.
• Monitor customer backlog, production commitments, and at‑risk orders and develop recovery plans when necessary.
• Partner closely with Operations leadership to monitor schedule attainment and address production constraints.
• Evaluate expedite requests and determine their impact on existing production and customer commitments.
• Maintain appropriate schedule discipline to minimize unnecessary changes, setups, disruptions, and inefficiencies.
• Utilize ERP/MRP data to support production planning, material requirements, capacity analysis, and decision‑making.
• Support SIOP activities by providing visibility into demand, capacity, backlog, inventory, material constraints, and production requirements.
• Coordinate scheduling requirements for new product introductions, engineering changes, and product transitions.
• Develop reporting and analysis to provide leadership with forward‑looking visibility into production risks and opportunities.
• Continuously improve scheduling processes, planning parameters, lead times, data accuracy, and overall planning effectiveness.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Operations Management, Business, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or a related field (preferred).
• 5+ years of experience in production planning, master scheduling, materials management, supply chain, or manufacturing operations.
• Experience in a complex, high‑mix manufacturing environment (strongly preferred).
• Strong knowledge of master production scheduling, MRP, capacity planning, production sequencing, and manufacturing processes.
• Experience working with multiple production lines, shared resources, changing customer demand, and material constraints.
• Strong ERP/MRP experience; Epicor experience is highly desirable.
• Advanced Microsoft Excel and analytical skills.
• Experience with SIOP/S&OP and capacity planning (preferred).
• APICS/ASCM CPIM or CSCP certification is a plus.
• Strong problem‑solving, communication, organization, and cross‑functional leadership skills.

What Success Looks Like

The successful Master Scheduler will create a production schedule the organization can trust. You will understand what can be produced, when it can be produced, what materials and capacity are required, and where potential constraints exist before they impact customers. You will bring structure and discipline to a highly dynamic manufacturing environment while maintaining the flexibility necessary to respond to changing customer and business needs. Key focus areas include schedule attainment, on‑time delivery, past‑due backlog, material readiness, schedule stability, manufacturing lead time, inventory performance, and capacity planning. If you are an analytical manufacturing professional who enjoys solving complex planning challenges, working across departments, and turning changing customer demand into an executable production strategy, we would like to hear from you.