Primary Freight Planner

**Primary Freight Planner**

**Asahi UK **are looking for a **Primary Freight Planner** to join our **Supply Chain **Team.

The Primary Freight Planner is responsible for the day-to-day logistics of moving goods from our EU breweries to our UK warehouses and direct to customer (D2C), ensuring that targeted OTIF and cost control measures are achieved.

**Key Accountabilities**

The Primary Freight Planner is responsible for the following key outputs and accountabilities:
International Freight Management
- Plan and schedule EU brewery collections with contracted logistics providers:

- Agree daily loading slots with breweries
- Communicate collection plans to carriers
- Ensure loads are collected on time by carriers
- Ensure deliveries to UK warehouses & direct delivery customers are timely and in full
- Make strategic decisions on optimum routes and freight modalities to achieve target delivery dates in the most cost-effective way
- Track and monitor all shipments from EU breweries to UK warehouses & direct customers to ensure stock arrives on time & in full and that delivery delays are communicated to key stakeholders
- Drive continuous improvement through effective, data-driven carrier management. This includes ownership of reporting & monitoring KPIs
- Build and manage strong relationships with carriers to drive operational efficiency. This involves holding and leading regular meetings to review operational performance and to identify areas of improvement
- Work with the Supply Planning team to provide carriers with robust collection forecasts to ensure sufficient capacity to manage volume of loads, especially during business peak periods, ensuring to communicate any challenges or constraints to key internal stakeholders
- Support with the implementation of customs clearance procedures for EU export and ensure that breweries, carriers and customs agents have the necessary information & documentation to facilitate prompt clearance
- Custodian of the logistics planning tool, Transwide, which is used to coordinate the daily brewery collections in Europe for replenishment orders and customer direct orders, as well are ETA and delivery confirmations:

- Ensure all brewery collection requests are visible on Transwide
- Ensure carriers provide prompt and accurate ETA updates for all orders
- Set up new carriers in the Transwide system

Cost Management
- Take full accountability for all carrier costs, identifying the best freight modality to optimise cost and deliver budget, whilst ensuring business requirements are met
- Report on and analyse costs incurred vs budget, explaining any variance to budget to finance business partners and ensuring that exceptional costs can be justified to the business
- Proactively identify cost saving initiatives and implement cost mitigation plans.
- Ensure that costs for exceptional items are tracked, accrued for, and cross-checked against invoices when they are received
- Assist in the preparation for month-end by ensuring that all exceptional items are identified and there are no “double counts” by Finance
- Maintain accurate records in the ERP system for all live carrier rates, including both the annual upload after the freight tender is complete, and interim updates as new lanes or carriers are added
- Work with accounts payable to resolve rate discrepancies preventing invoice payment.
- Process miscellaneous invoices on Asahi’s Concur system

Carrier Onboarding & Contract Management
- Work closely with the procurement team to run freight tenders, acting as the key contact responsible for providing forecasted volumes and detailing operational requirements.
- Arrange trials for new carriers as part of the freight tender process
- Ensure that new & existing carriers understand the required processes to follow, including customs, invoicing, and the use of the Transwide platform, and providing training documents and arranging meetings to address problems with process adherence when required
- Work with procurement to source new carriers as and when required to meet changing business needs, supporting with requesting new rates where necessary
- Ensure that freight rates are correctly uploaded and maintained in the ERP system
- Monitor and hold carriers to account for contractual KPIs including transit time and OTIF
- Attend regular performance review meetings with carriers

Reporting
- Ensure all carrier delays and incidents are logged and reported
- Create carrier performance dashboards
- Liaise with carriers to improve Transwide fill rate and accuracy
- Cost tracking and analysis for primary and direct freight costs vs budget
- Ensure SAP collection & delivery data is accurately maintained to enable robust MRP planning

Miscellaneous
- Provide cover and support for the wider Logistics team
- Additional responsibilities as required by the Primary Logistics Controller
- Attend customer and sales team meetings where required
- Support with the delivery of strategic projects