Materials Program Manager - BNSM

The Materials Project Manager (MPM) is the BU-facing supply chain leader and GSM advisor responsible for ensuring material and supply readiness across the assigned Business Unit.

The MPM translates the BU’s growth plans, product roadmap, forecasts, and operational priorities into supply readiness and risk-mitigation plans. The role evaluates demand against supplier capacity and capability, identifies constraints, quantifies business impact, and presents recommendations and required decisions to BU and GSM leadership.

Working across Procurement, Strategic Sourcing, Planning, Engineering, Quality, Manufacturing, Finance, Program Management, and suppliers, the MPM connects BU strategy, supplier strategy, and supply execution. Strategic Sourcing retains category and sourcing ownership, while Buyer/Planners retain routine transactional execution. The MPM owns BU-level readiness, risk visibility, cross-functional alignment, and executive follow-through.

• Serve as Procurement’s primary point of contact and trusted advisor toassignedBU leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Understand the BU’s three-to-five-year growth plans, product and technology roadmaps, demand outlook, launch schedule, manufacturing strategy, and customer priorities.
• Translate BU requirements into clear supply readiness priorities, risks, and actions.
• Represent GSM in BU planning, operating reviews, program reviews, and leadership discussions; communicate business exposure, tradeoffs, recommendations, and decisions required.

• Own BU supply readiness assessments for NPI, engineering changes, product transfers, sustaining production, and growth plans.
• Maintain a forward-looking view of material availability, critical parts, supplier capacity and capability, lead times, qualification timing, and ramp requirements.
• Evaluate demand scenarios against supply capacity to identify when constraints could affect launches, production, customer commitments, or growth.
• Assess sole- and single-source exposure, supplier technology dependencies, proprietary manufacturing processes, capacity constraints, sourcing limitations, obsolescence, quality concerns, and other continuity risks.
• Quantify potential impact to revenue, customer commitments, NPI, engineering changes (ECOs), production, cost, inventory, and business-growth objectives.
• Maintain the BU readiness dashboard and risk register with clear business impact, mitigation actions, owners, timing, escalation status, and decisions required.
• Drive mitigation plans toclosureand expedite unresolved risks early enough to protect BU commitments.
• Own and lead quarterly Supply Chain Readiness and Supplier Risk Reviews with BU and GSM leadership, covering current priorities, the next four-to-six quarters, and risks to the BU’s three-to-five-year growth plans.

• Serve as the GSM representative for assigned BU programs and ensure early Procurement and supplier involvement in NPI, engineering changes, product transfers, and production-readiness activities.
• Develop and coordinate material strategies, procurement deliverables, milestones, and readiness criteria aligned with program schedules, cost, quality, and working-capital objectives.
• Partner with Engineering and Quality to identify critical and long-lead parts, technical dependencies, qualification requirements, and sourcing constraints before they affect execution.
• Coordinate deliverables through the appropriate functional owners and intervene directly when a critical issue threatensa launch, production, revenue, or customer commitment. Routine PO creation, expediting, and shortage management…