Technical Services Engineer – Material Planning

Role Objective: The Technical Services Engineer - Material Planning is responsible for providing technical and engineering support for the planning, forecasting, and management of aircraft materials, components, spare parts, and consumables required to support scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities. The role ensures that material requirements are accurately identified based on aircraft maintenance programs, engineering requirements, fleet utilization, and reliability trends, while maintaining optimum stock levels and minimizing aircraft downtime. Duties and Responsibilities: Plan, forecast, and ensure the timely availability of aircraft parts, materials, components, and consumables required to support scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities and fleet operational requirements. Coordinate with Maintenance Planning, Production Planning, Engineering, Procurement, Technical Materials, and Stores to identify and establish material requirements arising from maintenance programs, engineering requirements, modifications, and operational needs. Monitor material availability and inventory levels for assigned material groups, ensuring optimum stock levels are maintained to support fleet requirements while minimizing excess and unnecessary inventory. Review maintenance work packages, aircraft maintenance programs, engineering requirements, and upcoming maintenance inputs to forecast material requirements and ensure required parts and components are available prior to maintenance commencement. Support initial provisioning and re-provisioning activities for assigned material groups, including Buyer Furnished Equipment (BFE), retrofit and modification programs, work-card materials, and breakdown spares, in accordance with fleet expansion, utilization, and phase-out plans. Apply approved material planning procedures, inventory policies, forecasting methods, and stocking parameters to establish cost-effective inventory levels and ensure adequate technical support for the fleet. Assist in meeting objectives of supply chain metrics including measurement and control of AOGs, Robberies, Shortages, SLAs, Surplus, Deferred Defects, Cycle Time, Backlogs and other KPIs. Identify, assess, and escalate critical material shortages, supplier performance issues, extended lead times, and delivery delays, recommending appropriate corrective actions to minimize operational and maintenance impact. Coordinate with Procurement, Technical Materials, Stores, Maintenance, and Engineering to resolve material shortages, inventory discrepancies, provisioning issues, unserviceable and quarantine stock, and other material-related constraints affecting aircraft maintenance. Review and validate material planning parameters, including reorder points, reorder quantities, supplier lead times, average monthly usage, consumption trends, and safety stock levels, recommending adjustments based on fleet requirements and historical demand. Analyse slow-moving, non-moving, surplus, and excess inventory and support inventory optimization initiatives, including stock rationalization, reallocation, vendor buy-back opportunities, and surplus disposal. Review applicable technical documentation, illustrated parts catalogs, component data, vendor information, and approved technical references to support part-number relationships, alternate part evaluations, and class-change requests. Prepare and coordinate documentation for alternate parts advice and class-change requests, including drafting applicable forms and compiling the required technical and supporting documentation for review and approval. Analyse aircraft utilization, maintenance requirements, component reliability, historical consumption, and fleet trends to improve material demand forecasting and optimize inventory requirements. Support the technical evaluation and identification of suitable aircraft materials, components, and alternate part solutions in coordination with Engineering and relevant technical departments, ensuring compliance with approved technical and regulatory requirements. Participate in material planning, inventory optimization, cost-reduction, and continuous-improvement initiatives to enhance material availability, planning accuracy, inventory efficiency, and overall fleet support. Provide technical material planning support during AOG and critical maintenance situations by identifying material requirements, prioritizing critical parts, and coordinating with relevant departments to facilitate timely aircraft recovery. Maintain accurate material planning data, forecasts, reports, and records for assigned material groups and ensure the integrity and accuracy of relevant planning parameters and inventory information. Ensure all material planning activities comply with applicable aviation regulations, approved maintenance and technical procedures, quality standards, company policies, and safety requirements. Undertake any other technical services or material-planning duties related to aircraft maintenance and fleet support as directed. Requirements Graduate in Mechanical/Aeronautical/Electrical Engineering, or equivalent. Having experience in planning. Having experience in Supply Chain is preferable (Warehouse & Logistics, Repair Management, Material Planning, Support & Inventory Control, Technical Purchasing). Having aircraft maintenance spares planning experience is preferable. Having airlines or MRO work experience will also be considered.