Location: Lightbody of Hamilton Ltd
Shift: Monday to Friday
Salary: Competitive with opportunity for growth
With over 135 years of craft baking heritage, Lightbody is proud to be the UK’s largest supplier of celebration cakes. From branded favourites like Disney, Mars, Universal and Thorntons to supermarket own-label products, we produce over 55 million cakes and sweet treats every year right here in Hamilton.
This is a fantastic opportunity to join a dynamic, fast-paced manufacturing environment where quality, efficiency and continuous improvement are at the heart of everything we do.
The Scheduler plays a key role in ensuring customer demand is met by creating, maintaining, and communicating robust production plans that optimise capacity, efficiency, and operational best practice within a fast-moving FMCG manufacturing environment
This is what you'll actually do!
As a Scheduler, you’ll be responsible for creating and managing daily and weekly production schedules, ensuring they align with customer demand, site capacity, and material availability. Your mission is to ensure production runs smoothly, efficiently, and delivers finished goods on time.
You’ll work closely with Demand Planners, Production Teams, and Warehousing to ensure all schedules are realistic, achievable, and optimised for efficiency and service. You will play a key role in balancing customer demand, production capability, and operational cost.
You’ll monitor live production performance and make real-time schedule adjustments when issues occur such as machine breakdowns, material delays, staffing changes, or demand fluctuations. You’ll ensure all updates are accurately reflected in ERP/MRP systems so that all departments are working to the latest plan.
You will act as a key communication link between departments, flagging risks such as late orders, capacity constraints, overtime requirements, or bottlenecks before they impact service levels. You will also support resolution of production planning issues by working cross-functionally to ensure alignment and clarity.
You’ll liaise directly with Demand Planners on delivery commitments, product launches, delists, stock levels, and customer requirements, ensuring scheduling decisions support both service and business priorities.
You will actively monitor stock levels, including slow-moving and short shelf-life products, and work with planning teams to minimise waste and ensure optimal stock positioning.
You’ll attend daily production meetings, provide clear updates on schedule performance, and support continuous improvement initiatives to enhance planning accuracy, efficiency, and overall scheduling performance.
Ideally this is you!
- Previous experience in production scheduling or factory operations within an FMCG or manufacturing or environment.
- Experience of ERP/Scheduling tools.
- Experience in Excel to an intermediate level is essential
- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to build effective working relationships.
- Confident communicator at all levels.
- Proactive, results-driven mindset with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced setting.
- Basic reading, writing, numeracy, and computer literacy skills.
What's in it for you?
- Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Leave to allow quality time with your new arrival!
- Enhanced Pension Scheme for our employees
- Death in Service Benefit
- Free Employee Assistance Programme (open to colleagues and their families)
- Retail discounts accessible via our Benefits Hub platform
- Company shop available on site (heavily discounted products!)
- Refer a Friend Scheme (up to £300 per referral – t&cs dependent)
- Employee Recognition Awards
- Extensive Learning & Development opportunities, including training and career progression support
- Opportunity to be part of a growing and successful UK bakery business
Our vision is to be the leading speciality bakery group in the UK, and we want the best people in place to achieve this. Our success is built on the talented people who work here, and we are committed to developing skills and supporting career growth at every level.
If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you.
