Jim Ackerman

About Jim Ackerman

A Supply Chain leader who is passionate about Planning, Forecasting and Managing Inventory.My strong experience across manufacturing, wholesale, and retail environments, combined with my ability to analyze data, and make complicated processes easy to understand, enables me to work across groups to effectively reach consensus, and drive action.At Cargill I am the lead for the monthly Demand Review portion of our Integrated Business Planning process (IBP). I also demand plan for multiple product lines, working with sales and marketing teams to enable a collaborative process. My work has advanced our view of data to include budget, target and gross margin measures to enable better optics and more effective decision making. I improved forecast accuracy by 15% in two years, and lead the development, training and rollout for our On Time In Full measure (OTIF). In its first year, we improved 3% on 500m lbs. of sales.While at Schwan\'s, the Demand Planning team I lead delivered forecasting results to enable an 8% increase in customer service level over 8 years, in supporting of a network delivering over $1b in annual direct to stores sales (DSD).I also worked individually as a Project Manager, championing data analysis and problem solving to support large scale change initiatives including Sales and Operations Planning (S & OP)At ExpressPoint, my group increased forecast accuracy 4%, and delivered materials under budget by 4% for a $39m business.I have effectively led and developed teams, but have always remained hands on when it comes to getting the most out of forecasting software and statistical modeling including SAP IBP, SAP APO, JDA/Manugistics, and Servigistics/SPM<>

Experience

1. Demand Planning and Supply Chain Integrated Planning (Ibp)

   Cargill

   Nov 2023 — Present · US

   Define and publish demand planning metrics targets and prepare demand plans, scenarios and recommendations for assigned products. • Direct oversight to ensure process documentation is maintained and current. • Direct the maintenance of data relative to demand forecasts including hierarchy, historical data cleansing, demand sensing data and forecast model parameters. • Implement, lead and ensure continuous improvement of the integrated business planning (IBP) process. • Collaborate with Finance to align the operating plans with financial budget in the month integrated business planning cycle. • Collaborate with partners to identify opportunities and develop scenarios to meet budget expectations, and use metrics to drive process improvement and meet business goals.

Education

• APICS

  CPIM, Production and Inventory Management

  2004 — 2006

• St. Cloud State University - Herberger Business School

  Bachelor's degree, Marketing

• Villanova University

  Six Sigma - Green Belt, Process Improvement

  2013 — 2013

Skills

• Leadership
• Grocery
• Pricing
• Demand Forecasting
• Inventory Management
• Categorization
• Supply Chain Management
• Shopper Marketing
• Jda
• Sales Plan
• Retail
• P&L Management
• Consumer Products
• Process Improvement
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Strategic Planning
• Supply Chain
• Business Process Improvement
• Fmcg
• Forecasting
• Strategy
• Demand Planning
• Sales Operations
• Management
• Direct Store Delivery