LinkedIn·Thursday, 13 August 2026·13d ago

Aris Economopoulos doesn't want his best planners to stay planners. Aris, the business process owner for the supply chain at Signify,…

Horizon Solutions

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Aris Economopoulos doesn't want his best planners to stay planners. Aris, the business process owner for the supply chain at Signify, explained why on the podcast to Ben (co-founder of Horizon Solutions) and co-host Wim (Managing Director at Lanark). Planning is a strong first role: junior planners get exposure to sales and marketing on one side, and the entire supply chain machine on the other. But stay in the seat too long, and you get very good at exactly one thing: crunching numbers. Signify's fix is rotation. "Planners tend to be a large population, so you'd like to be able to develop people in that population," Aris said. "Either giving them a stretch assignment or making sure that they serve in a different position for some time." Customer service, manufacturing, warehousing, then back to planning with end-to-end context the seat alone never teaches. Since planners are usually the largest group in a supply chain org, they're also the natural pipeline for future supply chain leaders. The same logic shows up in how Signify splits the role itself: - A centre of excellence owns the technical side: algorithms, history cleaning, statistical forecasting - Business-facing planners sit closer to the business, where soft skills and stakeholder relationships matter more than the model - Seniority tracks scope, not years in the seat - junior planners handle smaller categories, senior planners own the SKUs, revenue, or geographies where a wrong call costs something Ask a single planner to be excellent at the model and the relationships forever, in the same seat, and eventually you get neither. Full conversation on the Supply Chain Planning Podcast - https://lnkd.in/gt6XJtsz #demandplanning #sop #careerdevelopment