Production analyst vs planning analyst

The differences between production analysts and planning analysts can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a production analyst, becoming a planning analyst takes usually requires 2-4 years. Additionally, a planning analyst has an average salary of $68,137, which is higher than the $65,302 average annual salary of a production analyst.

The top three skills for a production analyst include data entry, financial analysis and windows. The most important skills for a planning analyst are project management, customer service, and data analysis.

Production analyst vs planning analyst overview

	Production Analyst	Planning Analyst
Yearly salary	$65,302	$68,137
Hourly rate	$31.40	$32.76
Growth rate	19%	11%
Number of jobs	75,978	92,380
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 65%	Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Average age	37	44
Years of experience	6	4

What does a production analyst do?

Production Analysts help manage the production flow of a company's goods or data. They are responsible for optimizing labor cost, volume, and efficiency of production, ensuring quality assurance, correcting equipment failure and hardware problem as well as monitoring production process proactively improving from slowdowns or bottlenecks. They also coordinate employee training or retraining on software or controls to improve efficiency. Production Analysts work with other teams to estimate production runs within the manufacturing or data process. They create production reports for customers and management.

What does a planning analyst do?

As a planning analyst, you will be responsible for designing and implementing a company's business and marketing strategies with the goal of driving profits and reducing costs. You will propose measures to enhance an organization's overall efficiency, and guide managers on ways to strengthen profit margins through risk awareness reduced costs, and increased revenues. Other duties include conducting risk analyses to identify areas of potential failure, maintaining the business continuity program, and handling internal and external corporate communications with the investment community and industry analysts.

Production analyst vs planning analyst salary

Production analysts and planning analysts have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Production Analyst	Planning Analyst
Average salary	$65,302	$68,137
Salary range	Between $46,000 And $90,000	Between $49,000 And $93,000
Highest paying City	Seattle, WA	Washington, DC
Highest paying state	Washington	Rhode Island
Best paying company	Apple	Meta
Best paying industry	Finance	Automotive

Differences between production analyst and planning analyst education

There are a few differences between a production analyst and a planning analyst in terms of educational background:

	Production Analyst	Planning Analyst
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 65%	Bachelor's Degree, 73%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	University of Georgia	Northwestern University

Production analyst vs planning analyst demographics

Here are the differences between production analysts' and planning analysts' demographics:

	Production Analyst	Planning Analyst
Average age	37	44
Gender ratio	Male, 57.2% Female, 42.8%	Male, 53.4% Female, 46.6%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 5.2% Unknown, 5.0% Hispanic or Latino, 12.4% Asian, 11.0% White, 66.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.1%	Black or African American, 8.0% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 8.9% Asian, 12.6% White, 65.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage	10%	12%

Differences between production analyst and planning analyst duties and responsibilities

Production analyst example responsibilities.

Manage and order raw material inventory for active production work orders utilizing MRP system in JD Edwards.
Manage and control the mainframe and peripheral data processing infrastructure.
Manage and successfully deliver multiple customer migration efforts to allow processing moves from mainframe environments to client/server environments.
Create, run and troubleshoot UNIX and Perl scripts to prepare and process data from client hard drives.
Used OMEGAMON to investigate any potential contention or resource problem in IMS, CICS or the MVS system.
Establish new accounts, process contracts, invoices, payroll, handle all petty cash and expense reports for the shows.

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Planning analyst example responsibilities.

Manage 160 footwear SKUs across 3700 stores to ensure optimal inventory depths during peak time frames.
Reduce work in process inventory by use of KANBAN system which also lead to improve customer service.
Manage suppliers (KPI's) to deliver target cost, service and quality levels in each operating center.
Manage cross-functional team which successfully create a manual for ISO 9000 certification and develop a training program for new hires.
Lead monthly and quarterly EAC forecasting and consolidate forecasts in support of corporate financial reporting.
Prepare requests for quotes (RFQ) and requests for improvement (RFI) for distribution to existing and potential suppliers.

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Production analyst vs planning analyst skills

Common production analyst skills

Data Entry, 8%
Financial Analysis, 7%
Windows, 7%
Strong Analytical, 6%
Troubleshoot, 6%
Production Process, 5%

Common planning analyst skills

Project Management, 8%
Customer Service, 7%
Data Analysis, 6%
Logistics, 6%
Strong Analytical, 5%
SQL, 5%

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Updated January 8, 2025

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