Senior Specialist, Global Raw Material Planning - Abbott Park, IL

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 122,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Senior Specialist, Global Raw Material Planning
About Abbott
Abbott is a global healthcare leader, creating breakthrough science to improve people’s health. We’re always looking towards the future, anticipating changes in medical science and technology. Our nutrition business develops science-based nutrition products for people of all ages, from helping babies and children grow, to keeping adult bodies strong and active. Millions of people around the world count on our leading brands – including Similac®, PediaSure®, Pedialyte®, Ensure®, and Glucerna® – to help get the nutrients they need to live their healthiest life.
Working at Abbott
At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You’ll also have access to:
Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of.
Employees can qualify for free medical coverage in our Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan in the next calendar year.
An excellent retirement savings plan with high employer contribution
Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save student debt program and FreeU education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor’s degree.
A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries around the world and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune.
A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as a best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.
The Opportunity
Our location in Columbus, OH currently has an opportunity for a Senior Specialist, Global Raw Material Planning in our Nutrition Division. The Global Raw Material Planner is responsible for developing, coordinating, and executing the global supply plan for raw materials used across Abbott Nutrition’s manufacturing network. This role ensures material availability to support production and customer service objectives while optimizing inventory, mitigating supply risk, and minimizing obsolescence and working capital. The planner serves as a key connection point among manufacturing sites, TPMs, procurement, suppliers, quality, logistics, demand planning, and finance. The successful candidate will translate production requirements and business priorities into executable material plans, identify supply constraints, and lead cross-functional actions to ensure continuity of supply across regions.
​What You’ll Work On:
Global Material Planning
Develop and maintain time-phased global supply plans for assigned raw materials, components, and commodities.
Translate demand, production schedules, bills of material, inventory policies, and lead times into material requirements.
Consolidate requirements across manufacturing sites to provide a global view of material demand, supply, inventory, and risk.
Ensure raw materials are available in the correct quantity, location, and timeframe to support production requirements.
Balance supply across sites and regions when constraints or competing priorities arise.
Maintain planning parameters, including lead times, order quantities, safety stock, lot sizes, sourcing rules, and planning horizons.
Participate in the Sales and Operations Planning or Integrated Business Planning process by communicating material constraints, risks, and recommended actions.
Supply Assurance and Risk Management
Proactively identify potential shortages, capacity constraints, extended lead times, supplier disruptions, and geopolitical or transportation risks.
Develop and coordinate recovery plans with procurement, suppliers, manufacturing sites, logistics, and quality teams.
Escalate critical supply issues using established governance and decision-making processes.
Maintain visibility to single-source materials, long-lead-time items, at-risk suppliers, and other critical supply dependencies.
Support business continuity planning, supplier diversification, alternate material qualification, and dual-sourcing strategies.
Inventory and Working Capital Optimization
Establish and maintain inventory targets that balance service, supply risk, shelf life, and working capital objectives.
Monitor inventory health, including excess, obsolete, slow-moving, blocked, expired, and short-dated materials.
Lead cross-functional actions to prevent or reduce excess and obsolete inventory.
Recommend inventory repositioning, consumption strategies, order adjustments, and material transfers across the global network.
Analyze root causes of inventory deviations and implement sustainable corrective actions.
Support periodic inventory reviews and financial reserve assessments.
Supplier and Procurement Collaboration
Partner with procurement and category management to communicate forecasts, demand changes, supply priorities, and capacity requirements to suppliers.
Participate in supplier performance reviews and provide planning-related input on delivery reliability, responsiveness, capacity, and lead-time performance.
Support supplier agreements by providing data on forecast volumes, order profiles, inventory expectations, and required flexibility.
Collaborate with procurement on purchase order execution, supplier recovery plans, minimum order quantities, and commercial trade-off decisions.
Build productive working relationships with key suppliers while maintaining alignment with procurement governance.
Cross-Functional and Global Coordination
Serve as the primary planning contact for assigned global raw material categories or supplier portfolios.
Collaborate with site planners to reconcile local production needs with global supply availability.
Coordinate with quality, regulatory, technical, and engineering teams when material changes, deviations, qualifications, or supplier transitions affect supply.
Partner with logistics and trade compliance teams to address transportation constraints, import and export requirements, and regional distribution needs.
Support new product introductions, product transfers, network changes, supplier changes, and material discontinuations.
Clearly communicate risks, assumptions, decisions, and action plans to stakeholders across different functions, regions, and organizational levels.
Data, Systems, and Continuous Improvemant
Maintain accurate planning data within ERP and advanced planning systems.
Use system-generated requirements and exception messages to manage priorities and drive timely actions.
Develop and maintain reports, dashboards, and performance indicators related to material availability, inventory, supplier delivery, and supply risk.
Conduct scenario analysis to evaluate changes in demand, supply, lead time, sourcing, transportation, or inventory policy.
Identify and implement opportunities to improve planning processes, data quality, automation, standardization, and decision-making.
Apply structured problem-solving and root-cause analysis to recurring material planning issues.
Support global planning standards, governance, system implementations, and process transformation initiatives.
Key Performance Indicators
Performance may be measured using the following metrics:
Raw material availability
Production schedule attainment attributable to material supply
Supplier on-time delivery
Inventory value and days of supply
Excess and obsolete inventory
Material shortage frequency and duration
Past-due purchase orders
Planning parameter and master data accuracy
Forecast or requirements stability
Premium freight and supply disruption costs
Supplier confirmation and schedule adherence
Timely closure of supply recovery actions
Coordinate material allocations during constrained supply situations based on business priorities and approved allocation rules.
Monitor supplier commitments and drive actions to close gaps between requirements and confirmed supply.
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE, YOU’LL BRING
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, operations, business, engineering, logistics, finance, or a related field.
5 or more years of experience in material planning, supply planning, production planning, procurement, manufacturing, or a related supply chain discipline.
Working knowledge of material requirements planning, inventory management, capacity planning, and supplier scheduling.
Experience using an enterprise resource planning system suc