Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a master planner and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Master Planner is liable for overseeing manufacturing and engineering work environments, setting production and coordinating department schedules. This position meets with the department supervisors to determine the progress and changes in any departmental programs.
The primary responsibilities include - ensuring all the materials are available in the supply chain, ensuring the inventory is maintained at acceptable levels, reviewing and planning requirements for adequate inventory, finding sources that provide raw materials, utilities and sources that supply raw materials and services, coordinating procurement efforts, determining the levels for the items they must procure, keeping clear records of all the activities and procedures through production planners or document administrators in their company, monitoring and adjusting master schedule based on production performance.
Core Skills Required to be a Master Planner
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A master planner should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Listening Skills:
Listening Skills are a practical ability to accurately receive and interpret messages you receive during the communication process to ensure flow and accuracy are maintained.
A Master Planner ought to have outstanding listening skills that lead to a better understanding at the workplace between the management and the staff, customer satisfaction in return yielding greater productivity with fewer mistakes and increased sharing of information in a more creative and innovative way.
Innovation:
Innovation is the process of translating new invention into a service that creates value or brings better solutions that meet the requirements.
A Master Planner ought to introduce innovation in their business to help save time and money giving a competitive advantage to grow and adapt the business in today's marketplace as well as creating more efficient processes and ideas with a likelihood for your business to succeed.
Facilitation:
Facilitation is making tasks or life easy for others while ensuring the daily running of successful meetings or workshops or business at large.
A Master Planner must use facilitation to process and structure a system that meets the needs of either an individual or a team to help them achieve their goals as well as add value to their lives by making sure each participates.
Decision Making:
Decision Making is the art of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information and assessing alternative resolutions before settling on one.
A Master Planner cannot afford to make poor decisions, that's why he ought to develop a systematic approach to decision making that allows him to make every decision with skill, confidence, and wisdom producing a final choice of competence in the workplace.
Equal Opportunity and Diversity:
Equal Opportunity and Diversity means having employees from a wide range of background that includes different ages, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief, educational background, physical ability and treating them equally.
A Master Planner is required by the law to create a workplace free from discrimination and harassment to its employees as well as understand and adhere to the rights and responsibilities under the human rights and antidiscrimination law.
Role Awareness:
Role Awareness is the ability to be informed of your role in a given environment as well as understand the expectations placed on a position and to see how they are met apparently.
A Master Planner must assess, measure and quantify his employee's awareness of their roles to see if they are transparent about what is required of each of them and review what kind of results they are delivering from their understanding.
Time Management:
Time Management is the capacity for an individual to assign specific time slots to activities as per their importance and urgency to make the best possible use of time.
A Master Planner must schedule each task within a stipulated period for each employee and ensure all the tasks are completed promptly thus actually teaching the staff the value of time and how to utilize it for the interest of the business and their growth.
Business Trend Awareness:
Business Trend Awareness is the capacity to be conscious of the changing ways in which the companies are developing in the marketplace.
A Master Planner should have the required knowledge of new business trends that he can instigate or follow and the understanding of how they are impacting the business decisions which will eventually bring success to the employees as well as the enterprise
Research:
Research is the ability to stay updated on the latest trends in different fields as per your concern or the concern of your company or business.
A Master Planner ought to stay up to date on the latest trends in hiring, leading, retention, technology and much more by using the newest research methods that allow him to make better decisions and improve productivity.
Mechanical Skills:
Mechanical Skills are the abilities to solve problems that arise in the workplace, although it may vary from one company to another.
A Master Planner must be well equipped with technical skills to handle any underlying mechanical problem that may arise from wrong scheduling to meeting unique customer needs, budget, legal constraints, environmental and social issues, technology changes and any other management requirements.
Hard Skills Required to be a Master Planner
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A master planner should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.