How To Become A Product Planner: What It Is and Career Path

What is a product planner and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Sachin Tuli

A product planner or production planner is responsible for developing, implementing, and monitoring the production schedules of a company to ensure maximum efficiency and optimal output. They play a vital role in making sure that deadlines are met, which affects the overall workflow of a company across multiple teams and departments.

To be more specific, the duties of a production planner revolve around determining requirements (labor, material, equipment, etc.), generating progress reports, and collaborating with other teams such as the procurement and inventory teams. They also address issues in production as they arise, solving them before they can have a bigger impact on the production process.

Most production planners have a four-year degree in a business-related field, but not all employers require tertiary education. What is a common requirement for all employers is relevant work experience, ideally in a previous position in a production team.

As for the salary, a production planner can earn $82,000 per year, on average, or about $40 per hour.

What's a day at work look like for a product planner?

Sachin Tuli

Director, International Business Major, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The pandemic accelerated ongoing shifts with work-from-anywhere and use of remote meeting technologies. With mass adoption at all levels, these trends are likely to persist to some degree across fields and industries. There will likely be less travel for a number of years, but concurrently we may see more cross-team and cross-national collaboration and coordination. From an international business perspective, firms do plan to continue their globalization efforts and we know that graduates themselves increasingly seek potential global opportunities and mobility when choosing which organizations to work for.

ScoreProduct PlannerUS Average

Salary

7.4

Avg. Salary $94,669

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.8

Growth rate -3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.54%

Asian 7.39%

Black or African American 7.88%

Hispanic or Latino 18.07%

Unknown 5.03%

White 61.08%

Gender

female 42.77%

male 57.23%

Age - 45

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 45

Stress level

7.8

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

5.3

Complexity level is intermediate

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.9

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a product planner

Explore product planner education requirements

Most common product planner degrees

Bachelor's

75.6 %

Master's

12.4 %

Associate

9.1 %

Start to develop specific product planner skills

Skills	Percentages
Product Development	9.23%
Product Planning	6.80%
Product Line	6.56%
Logistics	4.98%
MRP	4.41%

Complete relevant product planner training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New product planners learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a product planner based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real product planner resumes.

Research product planner duties and responsibilities

Manage company MRP purchases including contractor and consultant contract review.
Perform financial forecasting, leveraging MRP to plan performance of products and evaluate ROI of raw materials.
Task with supervising raw materials suppliers for computer test equipment construction using several ERP systems.
Support implementation of new ERP system (MFGPRO Eb2) relate to engineering procurement systems and processes.

Prepare your product planner resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your product planner resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a product planner resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable product planner resume templates

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