WHAT DOES A PLANNING INTERN DO?
Published: Oct 13, 2025 - The Planning Intern assists the Planning department with daily operations, data collection, and reporting on departmental objectives. This role involves identifying planning risks and opportunities, supporting process improvements, and ensuring accurate information flow across internal stakeholders. The intern also helps integrate planning into industrial activities, aligning with customer demands and adapting to evolving manufacturing processes and technical changes.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Planning Intern
1. Medical Planning Intern Responsibilities
- Facility Planning: Assist in medical facility planning, programming, medical equipment planning, and report writing.
- Client Coordination: Assist in the planning/programming for client meetings or other client presentations.
- Data Analysis: Conduct research, assist with the completion of data analyses, and develop reports.
- Healthcare Analysis: Assist in the analysis of long-term healthcare facility needs.
- Solution Development: Develop solutions involving the construction of new facilities and major rehabs of existing facilities.
- Space Utilization: Assist in the analysis of space utilization, determine space requirements for expansion, and create solutions to meet evolving space needs.
- Design Assistance: Perform limited design assignments under direct supervision.
- Design Computation: Work from plans/designs of others to compile data and perform design computations.
2. Data Planning Intern Additional Details
- Competitive Analysis: Conduct in-depth competitive analysis on activities in the Digital/Social/Mobile Landscape.
- Current Awareness: Stay current on news of the day and information related to a broad mix of relevant subjects.
- Strategic Recommendations: Develop recommendations that answer the client brief based on audit and research efforts.
- Campaign Development: Play an active role in conceptualization, research, planning, and development of new client campaigns.
- Creative Collaboration: Work with the Planner to write creative briefs, research dossiers, etc.
- Research Management: Responsible for managing the research library.
- Multitasking: Juggle multiple assignments and work in a high-pressure environment.
- Time Management: Manage time and establish priorities while maintaining flexibility to respond to changing demands.
- Professional Communication: Professionally and effectively communicate with clients and peers, demonstrating sound reasoning and judgment skills.
- Support Seeking: Seek clarity and assistance appropriately.
- Team Role Clarity: Articulate one’s role on an integrated team.
- Expectation Setting: Set clear expectations for what will be delivered and what information and partnership are needed to achieve the mutually desired outcomes.
- Market Research: Conduct category research and opportunity assessments across multiple industries, market and media trends, generational behaviors/values/trends, and societal/cultural mega-trends.
3. Planning Intern Details and Accountabilities
- Planning Support: Assist and support the Planning department on daily activities and reporting of departmental objectives.
- Data Analysis: Perform data collection and analysis.
- Risk Management: Anticipate, identify, and analyse planning risks and opportunities, including management reporting, corrective action plans, and process improvements.
- Stakeholder Coordination: Interface with internal stakeholders to ensure correct information flow both upstream and downstream.
- Process Facilitation: Facilitate robust planning processes on-site.
- Process Integration: Ensure that all industrial activities have integrated the planning dimension and drive the process.
- Demand Monitoring: Follow the demands of internal and external customers over the short and medium terms.
- Process Adaptation: Integrate the evolution of manufacturing processes and technical modifications into the daily job.
4. Material Planning Intern Roles and Responsibilities
- Resource Planning: Plan and prioritize resources for order fulfilment-order priority, build/ship capacity plan, etc.
- Backlog Management: Drive backlog fulfilment to meet the corporate business plan, which involves backlog ship planning, end-to-end risk assessment, and execution tracking.
- Order Control: Manage distress orders and late-risk orders to ensure on-time delivery.
- Customer Experience: Improve order visibility for customer experience and support order solutions for sales escalations.
- Process Improvement: Continue to improve process capability through digitization and automation.
- Employee Engagement: Involved with local or business-specific engagement initiatives in support of broader programs.
- Production Coordination: Work along with manufacturing and quality teams to execute a build schedule and address issues in a timely manner.
- Supply Chain Optimization: Work will focus primarily on the development of improvement projects within supply chain management, such as production scheduling, inventory management, material availability, and the maintenance of work orders.
5. Demand Planning Intern Roles and Details
- Report Management: Run weekly and monthly reports for the Demand Planning team.
- Analytical Support: Provide detailed, product-level analytical support to key inputs of the monthly Demand Planning process.
- Supply Communication: Provide supply updates to Sales management and cross-functional teams.
- Root Cause Analysis: Conduct root cause analysis of business performance against forecasts and supply gaps.
- Project Coordination: Manage small projects, run meetings, document meeting minutes, and follow up on action items.
- Task Management: Manage project tasks and timeline inputs on internal software (Jira).
- Process Standardization: Ensure the best and standardized practices are followed across all shared planning resources.
- Forecast Management: Manage the company’s forecasting and purchasing system along with the demand planner to create inventory forecasts and update SKU items.
- Collaborative Forecasting: Work with the sales team to prepare data and collaborate on forecasts with major retail partners.
6. Planning Intern Essential Functions
- Field Data Collection: Gather and verify field information in support of department projects.
- Project Documentation: Provide mapping and related documentation of assigned projects.
- Plan Review: Aid with reviewing plats, zoning applications, and site plan inspections.
- Research Support: Assist with research and graphics related to demographics and other planning activities.
- Customer Assistance: Provide internal customer support.
- Information Archiving: Scan and archive hardcopy information.
- Procedure Compliance: Follow all department procedures and guidelines, completing daily assignments, projects, or tasks.
- Data Maintenance: Maintain equipment, files, and databases.
- Performance Improvement: Participate in performance improvement activities or meetings, then recommend actions to improve results.