Supply Chain & Materials Manager – Manufacturing

Supply Chain & Materials Manager – Manufacturing

We are seeking an experienced Supply Chain & Materials Manager to lead material planning, purchasing, inventory, and supplier performance for a manufacturing operation. This is an on-site leadership position responsible for keeping materials aligned with production and project requirements while improving inventory performance, supplier reliability, and supply chain resilience.

The position directly supervises a Buyer Planner team and works closely with Project Management, Sales, Engineering, Production, Quality, Finance, and Supply Chain leadership.

Power distribution industry experience is strongly preferred.

What You'll Do

• Lead, coach, and develop Buyer Planners while establishing clear performance expectations and KPIs.
• Balance workloads across commodities, projects, and production requirements.
• Ensure Buyer Planners effectively use ERP/MRP systems for purchasing, planning, item master maintenance, and exception management.
• Support professional development, cross-training, and certification opportunities such as APICS CPIM and CSCP.
• Maintain coverage plans to ensure continuity during absences and staffing changes.

• Partner with Project Managers to align material availability with project schedules and production release dates.
• Participate in engineered-to-order (ETO) programs to review BOMs, identify long-lead materials, and assess supply risks.
• Provide material availability and lead-time information to support realistic customer commitments.
• Lead shortage escalations and coordinate corrective actions with suppliers and internal teams.
• Review the active project portfolio regularly and align material critical paths with project schedules.
• Support configure-to-order (CTO) and quick-ship programs through appropriate inventory and material planning.

• Provide Sales with supply chain input on material availability, supplier capacity, and realistic lead times before commitments are made.
• Participate in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) activities.
• Use sales pipeline and backlog information to anticipate material requirements and reduce supply risk.
• Support customer-specific stocking programs, blanket orders, and consignment inventory arrangements.

• Develop positioning plans for critical and long-lead materials.
• Manage inventory strategies for components such as specialty breakers, bus assemblies, power electronic modules, custom enclosures, and transformers.
• Identify single-source and sole-source risks and recommend mitigation strategies, including dual sourcing, safety stock, supplier-managed inventory, and LTAs.
• Support commodity strategies using supplier performance, consumption, and demand data.
• Execute approved supplier and commodity strategies at the facility level.
• Lead facility-level make/buy analysis and provide recommendations to supply chain and operations leadership.
• Monitor commodity pricing, supply constraints, geopolitical risks, tariffs, and other factors affecting material cost or availability.

• Own facility inventory performance, including inventory turns, excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory, days of supply, and working capital.
• Drive toward a target of 10 inventory turns per year.
• Lead monthly E&O reviews and coordinate disposition actions such as supplier returns, project redeployment, and write-off recommendations.
• Establish inventory policies covering safety stock, reorder points, lot sizing, and cycle counts.
• Lead the annual physical inventory process.
• Balance inventory investment, material availability, and working capital using data-driven decisions.

• Manage supplier performance using on-time delivery (SOTD), quality/PPM, lead-time accuracy, and responsiveness metrics.
• Conduct quarterly business reviews with key suppliers and establish measurable improvement plans.
• Escalate supplier issues that could affect production continuity.
• Partner with Quality Engineering on SCARs, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and supplier qualification.
• Support new supplier qualification with Quality Engineering and…