Strategic Sourcing Manager

Strategic Sourcing Manager

Chandler Industries is a premier contract manufacturer specializing in precision machining, EDM, sheet metal fabrication, and a range of value-added services. We excel in providing exceptional value through responsive customer service, technical expertise, and innovative lean manufacturing practices.

With six divisions across Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Mexico, Chandler supports leading customers in highly regulated industries including aerospace, defense, medical, and semiconductor. Our commitment to world-class quality and on-time performance has made us a trusted long-term partner.

The Strategic Sourcing Manager leads Chandler's strategic sourcing and supplier commercial strategy across its U.S. operations. This role is responsible for developing and negotiating supplier agreements, long-term supply and stocking arrangements, commercial terms, and sourcing strategies that ensure continuity of supply, optimize cost, improve supplier performance, support working capital objectives, and enhance customer program profitability.

Serving as the primary commercial owner for key raw material, outside service, special process, hardware, freight-sensitive, and program-critical suppliers, this position also manages the contractual relationship with key logistics and tooling suppliers to support our customer programs. The Strategic Sourcing Manager aligns supplier pricing, lead times, freight terms, surcharges, stocking agreements, and performance expectations with customer contracts, long-term agreements (LTAs), blanket orders, demand forecasts, and operational requirements.

This is a senior individual contributor role focused on supplier strategy, market intelligence, commercial negotiations, supplier performance management, and escalation support for the purchasing team. The position does not perform routine transactional purchasing activities such as purchase order creation, expediting, or daily buyer responsibilities.

The Strategic Sourcing Manager has delegated authority to approve supplier agreements, commercial terms, sourcing recommendations, stocking arrangements, and supplier commitments within established approval limits, escalating decisions beyond those limits as appropriate.

Working closely with Supply Chain, Operations, Quality, Engineering, Finance, Sales, Program Management, and site leadership, this role develops sourcing strategies that strengthen supplier partnerships, mitigate supply risk, reduce supplier-driven margin erosion, and support Chandler's long-term operational and business objectives.

Responsibilities:

• Supplier Agreement Management:
  Negotiate long-term vendor agreements to support continuity of supply, competitive pricing, customer program requirements, and margin protection. Ensure supplier-side commitments are aligned with customer LTAs, pricing agreements, blanket orders, and forecasted demand.
• Stocking Agreement Strategy:
  Identify suppliers and programs requiring stocking agreements, consignment arrangements, capacity reservations, blanket releases, or similar supply-continuity mechanisms. Negotiate stocking rules, replenishment obligations, liability terms, aging rules, and ownership terms.
• Supplier Commercial
  
  Terms:
  
  Negotiate and maintain supplier terms including payment terms, surcharge rules, freight rules, lead-time commitments, MOQ requirements, price-adjustment mechanisms, cancellation terms, and escalation processes.
• Approval Authority and Commercial Governance:
  Exercise delegated approval authority for supplier agreements, commercial terms, supplier commitments, and sourcing actions within established company limits. Ensure supplier agreements and negotiated terms are documented, communicated, and translated into ERP/system parameters where applicable.
• Supplier Performance Monitoring:
  Monitor system data for lead times, price-list adherence, purchase price variance, supplier on-time delivery, supplier quality, responsiveness, surcharge compliance, and freight-rule compliance. Escalate deviations to buyers, quality, operations, finance, or leadership as appropriate.
• Supplier Scorecards:
  Generate and maintain supplier scorecards for use by buyers, supply chain leadership, quality, operations, and executive leadership. Scorecards should include relevant measures of delivery, quality, pricing, commercial compliance, responsiveness, lead-time reliability, and supplier risk.
• Market Intelligence and Pricing Strategy:
  Monitor macro-pricing trends for key materials, special processes, outside services, freight, and other supplier cost drivers. Recommend pre-buys, push-outs, supplier negotiations, customer pricing actions, or sourcing changes based on data-supported market trends.
• Data, Analytics, and AI-Enabled Sourcing:
  Leverage Chandler ERP data, supplier performance data, BI tools, and AI-enabled analytics to identify sourcing opportunities, supplier risk, pricing leakage, lead-time deviations, surcharge and freight inconsistencies, and working-capital optimization…