Field Service Planning Lead

In the dynamic world of high-volume, high-speed production lines, our client stands out not only for the quality of its equipment and services, but also for how we respond to customer needs. At the heart of this responsiveness lies effective planning—a key enabler of customer satisfaction, technician engagement and operational excellence.

As phe Planning Lead you creates an environment that fosters Field Service planning performance and continuously improves the Field Service planning performance. You ensure that only ready/usable work enters the plan, match real demand to the right competencies (internal, subsidiaries, or external) via a clear escalation path, and drive adoption of the defined planning processes across stakeholders and systems (Salesforce, SAP, Resco). 

As the planning manager, you coordinate the entire process from start to finish by:

stakeholders (Project Managers (PMs) / Customer Care Managers (CCMs), Business Support, Procurement, systems (Salesforce, SAP, Resco),
internal/external resources (Field Service Engineers (FSEs).

This role, requiring strong Leadership skills, combines operational planning expertise , team coordination, and continuous improvement. The Planning Lead ensures the quality of the planning services, and is responsible for supporting the team’s growth and aligning planning operations with the company’s strategic goals.

What awaits you?

• Leading, coaching and developing the team of Planners (4 plus one admin support), fostering engagement, ownership, performance and continuous learning, while ensuring a constructive and solution oriented team culture.
• Ensuring that Field Service planning is executed with high quality, predictability and customer focus, by overseeing that planners apply the defined processes, intake standards and planning rules consistently.
• Providing mid and long term visibility on workload and capacity by analysing sold projects (maintenance, new machine installations, change parts) and translating these into clear planning outlooks.
• Actively contributes to workforce planning by identifying future capacity or skills gaps and advising the Regional Field Service Manager on the need for additional or specialised technician resources.
• Promoting customer satisfaction by ensuring fast, coordinated and realistic planning responses supported by reliable job information and consistent communication across stakeholders.
• Driving continuous improvement of the planning process, ensuring that defined processes and templates are applied as intended, and that recurring issues are escalated and resolved in a structured, sustainable way.
• Monitoring and reporting on planning performance by defining, collecting, and validating the relevant KPIs (e.g., intake quality, time to first proposal, first-time-right, plan stability, stakeholder satisfaction), and steering corrective actions with the team based on these insights.
• Acting as a central liaison between the planning team and key stakeholders ensuring alignment in priorities, decisions and expectations, and managing escalations to safeguard effective communication and timely issue resolution.
  You know-how to carry out a thorough and well considered analysis of your team’s development needs and align them with the overall strategy to deliver high quality service to its customers.

We are looking for a senior field service planning lead for our client specializing in systems engineering for the beverage and liquid food industry. It designs, manufactures, and commissions machines and complete production lines for manufacturers of beverages, food products, and other packaged goods.

You contribute with: 

• Preferably a Master degree in a technical field.
• Your strong technical background
• Proven leadership in field service / workforce planning in a fast-moving B2B environment (scheduling under constraints, escalations, stakeholder alignment).
• Experience in continuous process improvement, project and change management is expected, preferably combined with a solid understanding of Lean principles.
• Systems & Data literacy: SAP, Salesforce (or equivalent), including PR/PO flows and cross system status alignment.
  Fluency in FR/NL/EN or willing to reach a strong level in all three languages. German is a plus.
• Strong stakeholder leadership, able to set expectations, explain trade-offs, (de)escalate and to secure timely decisions.
• Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage priorities under pressure.
• Strong operational analytics: defining KPI’s, reading trend data, lead performance reviews, …
• Continuous improvement & process discipline: experience with Lean or continuous improvement methods.
• Change & project coordination skills: solid change management and project coordination skills to guide the planning team and stakeholders through new processes and tools, support adoption, and ensure that operational changes are implemented smoothly and sustainably.
• Excellent communication skills and a natural leadership style that inspires collaboration.
• Service mindset balancing client and company needs.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• You inspire confidence in your team and your environment by demonstrating strong judgement, listening and analytical skills, accompanied by clear and caring communication, ultimately leading to customer satisfaction.

Our environment : 

Open-ended, full-time contract with possibility to work from home after a first integration period. This position is based in Louvain-la-Neuve. Your presence in the office is recommended at least 3 – 4 days a week.

The Planning Lead is expected to regularly spend time on-site with customers (approximately once or twice per month) to stay closely connected to field realities and ensure planning decisions remain aligned with operational challenges and customer expectations.