Category Manager, Senior

Global Category Leader

This position reports to the Sr. Manager, Strategic Sourcing and will provide global category leadership, aligning with regional category teams and working closely with divisional product leaders, operations and other key stakeholders to deploy strategies that drive value and sustainability in our supply chain.

Responsibilities:

• Manages complex multi-year supplier relationships aligned to enable our front-end portfolio strategies
• Plans, organizes, directs, controls and communicates all strategic sourcing activities related to assigned commodities and services to cross functional supply, engineering, technical support and operations group
• Conducts brainstorming sessions at facilities with cross functional teams to identify strategic opportunities and deployment priorities on cost saving initiatives.
• Provides oversight to sourcing/project managers on the deployment of projects with internal and external stakeholder
• Collaborates with global and regional supply teams to identify, screen and qualify strategic suppliers.
• Works with global facilities to create regional and global material cost savings funnels that align with commercial strategies and financial targets
• Drives spend analysis, including counter measures for projects that fall short of plan and makes decisions to remedy the issues to get the teams back on track to meet or exceed plan
• Develops and delivers strategies that will deliver year over year cost savings.
• Possesses an understanding of total cost of ownership
• Proactively assesses internal and external process improvements and influences effective change and drive innovation and continuous improvements
• Collaborates with global business units on the preparation of Request for Proposals (RFPs), Request for Quotations (RFQ's) and leads the screening and supplier selection process
• Negotiate and drafts supplier contracts of sale, including payment terms, deliveries, price, freight terms, currency exchange, raw material steel fluctuation, inventory levels
• Analyzes market and delivery conditions to determine present and future (industry trends in pricing and availability that will impact the business) material availability, and prepares market analysis reports
• Responsible for timely reporting to agree upon KPI's and presenting Strategic Sourcing plans, activities and progress

Professional Experience/

Qualifications:

• BA or BS degree required preferably in Supply Chain/Operations Management, minimum in a business/industrial related field
• 7 years' experience working in an industrial manufacturing environment with experience in strategic Procurement/Supply Chain, or similar position
• Proven success of strategically working with suppliers
• Experience sourcing in low cost regions
• Experience working with multiple locations globally
• Proven success in a change management and "stretch" environment
• Ownership of [direct material] categories with general knowledge of other categories such as steel, resin, forgings and stampings are a plus
• Proven success in a matrix driven organization
• Excellent working knowledge of industrial markets, suppliers and company requirements
• Travel up to 25%