Supply Chain Planner CV Examples & Writing Guide

A concise CV for a planner with eight years across materials and demand planning at a consumer goods manufacturer. The name and companies are invented. Notice that every job says what was planned (how many SKUs, how many suppliers, which plants) and closes with a planning metric, not a duty.

Planning CVs are usually screened by a planning manager or head of supply chain who has an open seat on a small team. They read for four things before deciding to call you.

• Which planning role and which horizon. Demand, supply, material, production or inventory planning, and whether you worked in weeks (execution) or months (S&OP). Say it in your title line so nobody has to guess.
• The system you actually ran. SAP (ECC or S/4HANA, IBP, the old APO), Oracle ASCP or Fusion, Kinaxis RapidResponse, Blue Yonder, o9, NetSuite, or an ERP plus spreadsheets. Name the module, not just the vendor. A planner who has run MRP in SAP MM can be productive in weeks; one who has only used a home-grown tool takes longer.
• The size of what you planned. SKU count, part numbers, supplier count, number of plants or DCs, annual revenue or spend. "Managed inventory" tells them nothing; "640 finished-goods SKUs across 4 DCs, £76m" places you immediately.
• Numbers that planners recognise: forecast accuracy or MAPE, bias, inventory turns, days of supply, fill rate or OTIF, expedited freight spend, schedule adherence, SLOB reduction, line-down events. Two or three of these, with a before and after, beat a paragraph of duties.

“Tell me the SKU count and the metric you moved. If a planner writes "improved forecast accuracy from 68 to 81 percent on 640 SKUs" I already know how big their world was and that they measured themselves. Half the CVs I get just list the software.”

Planning is one of the few jobs where the metrics are already calculated for you. Pull them from your own reporting rather than guessing, and give both the starting point and the result.

• Forecast accuracy or MAPE at the level you planned (item, item-location, family) and the period lag. Say the level, because item-level accuracy of 80% is a different achievement from family-level 80%.
• Inventory: days of supply, weeks of cover, stock turns, total value in pounds. Give the pound figure as well as the ratio, since finance-minded directors read pounds.
• Service: case fill rate, line fill, OTIF (on time in full), back-order lines, customer promise-date adherence.
• Cost of poor planning avoided: expedited freight, premium air shipments, overtime caused by schedule changes, write-offs of obsolete stock.

Three lines: planning seat and years, what you planned and in which system, one or two results. Use a career objective only if you are moving into planning from another function.

A planner bullet should say what you planned, how big it was, what you changed, and what moved. Duty lists get skimmed past because every planner does them.

List 10 to 14 skills, sorted so the ones in the job advert sit at the top. Planning adverts are specific about systems, so put the exact module names in.

• Planning methods: statistical forecasting, MRP, master production scheduling, distribution requirements planning, S&OP and IBP cycles, capacity and constraint planning, ABC/XYZ segmentation, safety stock and reorder point setting.
• Systems: SAP (ECC MM and PP, S/4HANA, IBP, APO), Oracle ASCP or Fusion SCM, Kinaxis RapidResponse, Blue Yonder, o9, Logility, NetSuite, Infor. Name the ones you have actually transacted in and put "exposure" next to the ones you have only seen.
• Analysis: Excel to a genuine level (Power Query, pivot tables, XLOOKUP, scenario models), Power BI or Tableau, SQL queries against order and shipment tables, and enough statistics to explain bias versus error.
• Metrics you can speak to: MAPE and forecast value added, inventory turns and days of supply, fill rate and OTIF, schedule adherence, supplier on-time delivery.
• Working with people: running a consensus meeting where sales wants a higher number and finance wants a lower one, pushing back on a plant that cannot make the schedule, chasing a supplier without losing the relationship.

Planning has no licence. Qualifications are optional, but the two ASCM certifications are recognised by many UK manufacturers and multinationals, and they can get a CV past a first screen.

• CPIM (Certified in Planning and Inventory Management) from ASCM, formerly APICS. The one most often named in adverts for material, production and inventory planning roles. Give the year you earned it.
• CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional), also from ASCM, broader and more common for planners moving towards manager level or end-to-end roles.
• CILT qualifications in logistics and supply chain, or CIPS if your job leans towards buying, which UK employers know well where planning sits with logistics or procurement. The CPF (Certified Professional Forecaster) from the Institute of Business Forecasting is the specialist option on demand planning CVs.
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt, useful if you have run process improvement projects. Say who trained and certified you, since providers vary a lot.

Many planner adverts ask for a degree in supply chain, business, engineering or a related subject, but plenty of good planners came up through buying, customer service or the shop floor. If that is you, put the planning work first and the degree line last.

Planning is a common first analytical job after a supply chain degree, and a common second job for buyers, customer service advisers, schedulers and warehouse team leaders. Both routes work if the CV shows you can handle data and make a decision with it.

1. 1Put a short personal statement at the top naming the planning seat you want and the closest thing you have done to it, with a number attached.
2. 2For new graduates: list the modules that map to the job (forecasting, operations management, statistics, ERP simulation) and any final-year project or case competition with the result. A project that cut a simulated plant's inventory 15% is worth more than a line about your degree classification.
3. 3For career changers: mine your current job for planning work you already do. Buyers release orders and chase suppliers. Customer service advisers see the fill rate misses. Warehouse team leaders know cycle counts and inventory accuracy. Warehouse and plant experience is genuinely valued because you know why the plan fails.
4. 4Show the tools: any ERP you have transacted in, Excel work you built rather than filled in, and SQL or Power BI if you have them. A placement where you ran MRP exceptions counts as planning experience.
5. 5Add CPIM Part 1 if you have passed it, or that you are sitting it. It is a clear signal for a candidate without the title yet.

• Two pages is the norm for a UK planner CV; one page is fine early in your career. Planning managers read fast and the top third of page one decides it.
• Order: header with title line, personal statement, work experience, skills, systems, qualifications, education. Put systems in their own short block if the advert lists five of them.
• Single column, standard font, no photo, no date of birth, no graphs or skill rating bars. Manufacturers and distributors use Workday, SuccessFactors, iCIMS and Oracle Recruiting; all of them read plain text best.
• Mirror the advert's words exactly: "demand planning", "MRP", "S&OP", "forecast accuracy", "safety stock", "inventory turns", "fill rate", "SAP", "Kinaxis", "master production schedule", "purchase requisition", "lead time", "expedite", "CPIM". If the advert says "materials planner" and you wrote "material planner", add both.
• US employers advertise the same job asking for a one-page resume. For UK and Irish roles keep to the CV conventions here: no photo, no personal details beyond contact information, two pages at most.

Paste the advert into the cvplex ATS checker with your draft. It flags planning terms in the advert that never appear in your CV, bullets with no number, and a systems list that does not match what the job asks for.