Central Planning & Ecosystem PMO Manager - Global R&D Facilities

Location: USA-Ohio-Lewisburg

The Central Planning & Ecosystem PMO Manager owns the integrated planning system for the Royal Canin R&D Facilities ecosystem to accelerate innovation by reducing trial waiting times, avoiding unnecessary repeat execution, and directing each study to the capability that provides the best scientific and business value. The role converts portfolio and governance signals into forward demand, balances work across Royal Canin sites, and coordinates placement of suitable investments and work prerequisites within the wider PetCare ecosystem when they cannot or should not be delivered internally.

It also ensures trials reuse existing knowledge, contribute governed and reusable data, and deliberately strengthen predictive capabilities; up to 30% of the role supports strategic transformation and Facilities Leadership Team PMO activities.

What are we looking for?

Education & Professional Qualifications

Bachelor's or Master's degree in engineering, science, operations, industrial engineering, business, data science or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience. Project/program-management, portfolio-management, Lean or strategic-planning training is preferred.

Knowledge / Experience

• Significant experience in multi-site central or capacity planning, portfolio management or program management.
• Ability to translate uncertain pipeline demand into forecasts and allocation scenarios.
• Functional leadership without direct authority and strong PMO, governance and executive-reporting capability.
• Practical competence in Excel, Power BI, Smartsheet and PPM tools.
• Experience with AI-enabled forecasting, Python or automation is preferred.
• Working knowledge of capital planning, quality, compliance and animal welfare is preferred.
• What will be your key responsibilities?
• Lead central planning and demand forecasting
• Own the end-to-end planning framework across Royal Canin Facilities, integrating confirmed schedules, emerging portfolio demand and probabilistic forecasts into one reliable view.
• Participate in relevant governance and pre-governance reviews and translate signals from PPM-supported TRL, global and regional QuEST, global and regional QES, FEF, and non-core PLM activities into near-, mid- and long-term demand.
• Build forecasts progressively as projects advance through stage gates, increasing confidence and detail over time.
• Govern minimum planning-entry criteria and master data, including project identifiers, product and production information, and prerequisites for scheduling and Monarch integration.
• Identify demand early, protect capacity for urgent and high-value protocols, and reduce trial waiting times.
• Orchestrate load and capacity across Royal Canin and the wider ecosystem
• Act as the primary contact for distributing and rebalancing load across the three Royal Canin facilities, including Pet Center and Pilot Plant / Technical Center capabilities.
• Govern what should be delivered within Royal Canin Facilities and recommend where work should be placed externally when capacity, capability, timing, logistics or strategic value requires it.
• Coordinate placement of suitable work with Pet Nutrition, WPSI, other Pet Centers and approved external providers once the required governance, data standards, commercial arrangements and planning processes are established.
• Challenge convenience-based allocation and use fit-for-purpose or underutilized sites for standard work, preserving advanced Royal Canin capacity for complex, urgent or strategically differentiated trials.
• Apply transparent placement criteria covering scientific fit, animal welfare, quality, timing, cost, import/export constraints, logistics, resilience, capacity and business priority.
• Include inter-site diet and sample movements, import/export requirements and associated lead times in placement decisions.
• Provide functional leadership to site planners, schedulers and PMOs
• Establish common planning standards, horizons, data definitions, routines, KPIs and decision rights across sites.
• Provide dotted-line functional leadership while local line management and detailed day-to-day scheduling remain with each site.
• Align objectives, coach the planning community, review data quality and performance, and facilitate cross-site planning forums.
• Maintain a clear boundary: sites execute schedules; this role owns consolidated forecasting, allocation principles, capacity balancing, governance and ecosystem-level recommendations.
• Maximize the value of trials, knowledge and predictive capabilities
• Partner with Research, Design, Deploy and Pet Center teams to reuse prior knowledge and avoid studies already answered by sufficient evidence, including AI-supported retrieval and semantic search across previous data and protocols.
• Ensure trials are planned as part of broader scientific programs and governed data strategies, not as isolated executions.
• Embed predictive-capability guardrails so standard protocols generate consistent, interoperable and reusable data for model development and validation.
• Support strategic data-generation programs across product, palatability, digestibility, behavior, health and other relevant domains where they strengthen prediction and reduce repeated physical testing.
• Promote a connected data fabric linking project intent, protocol design, execution conditions, pet and product context, results and subsequent insights.
• Build AI-enabled planning and decision support
• Develop and maintain dashboards covering confirmed work, forecast demand, utilization, constraints and planning horizons up to 36 months and beyond where appropriate.
• Integrate Monarch, PPM-supported portfolio, finance and site data into a controlled planning model and common source of truth; extend the approach to non-PPM demand or promote its integration into PPM where appropriate.
• Develop predictive scenarios, protocol-to-project-to-gate matching, historical knowledge mining and AI-enabled workflows that improve forecasts, identify reusable evidence and reduce manual effort.
• Maintain verification, refresh and snapshot routines so assumptions, model performance and forecast changes remain visible and auditable.
• Influence Monarch and connected capabilities so planning, trial traceability and knowledge reuse become part of the Facilities digital backbone.
• Lead capital and capability planning
• Coordinate the five-year Facilities capital and capability planning process, linking demand forecasts, capability gaps, site master plans and ecosystem strategy.
• Support One CAB / IVCP prioritization with evidence-based recommendations across safety, quality, compliance, animal welfare, innovation, capacity, resilience and cost.
• Maintain visibility of investment phasing, dependencies, decisions and delivery outlook without replacing accountable project owners or technical authorities.
• Program-manage transformation, Facilities leadership and ecosystem priorities (up to 30%)
• Maintain the integrated transformation roadmap, including owners, milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, resources, KPIs and expected benefits.
• Run steering meetings and working forums; prepare agendas and pre-reads; issue minutes, decision logs and action trackers; and follow actions through closure.
• Provide PMO support to the R&D Facilities Leadership Team and ecosystem steering teams, including agendas, materials, minutes, decisions, actions and strategic follow-up.
• Consolidate progress across Royal Canin and agreed ecosystem partners and provide concise reporting to leadership and steering groups.
• Coordinate annual and quarterly planning cycles, portfolio reviews and strategy refreshes, translating priorities into executable workstreams.
• Facilitate governance for capacity sharing and work placement, including capability mapping, roles, funding logic, data requirements and escalation paths.
• Drive stakeholder alignment, data governance and continuous improvement
• Serve as the central planning interface for R&D functions, Finance, Digital/Monarch, Facilities Engineering, Logistics and ecosystem partners.
• Monitor KPIs for forecast accuracy, trial waiting time, utilization, load balancing, protected urgent capacity, planning-cycle adherence, decision turnaround, roadmap delivery, data quality and knowledge reuse.
• Work with data owners and scientific functions to ensure trial data is comparable, traceable and reusable across studies and sites.
• Use lessons learned and stakeholder feedback to improve standards, tools, allocation decisions, ways of working and customer experience.\\
• What can you expect from Mars?
• Work with diverse and talented Associates, all guided by the Five Principles.
• Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
• A strong focus on learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
• An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.