Senior Director of Supply Chain

Hirsh Industries | On-site at our West Des Moines, Iowa headquarters (hybrid — minimum 3 days/week on-site) | Full-time

Own purchasing, planning, forecasting, and freight for a century-old American manufacturer — and bring them together under one leader for the first time.

Hirsh Industries has been making steel office furniture and storage products in America since 1924. We sell under our SPACE SOLUTIONS®, HIRSH®, and IRON HORSE® brands and under our customers' private-label brands, through office superstores, wholesalers, national retailers, industrial and MRO distributors, e-commerce marketplaces, schools, and dealers.

We design and build our own products in our own factories — we don't outsource manufacturing. We run two plants, in Dover, Delaware and Mexicali, Mexico, and supplement them with product sourced from Asia. Most of our volume is replenishment business for large national accounts, which means supply chain performance shows up directly in our results.

Purchasing, production planning, forecasting, and freight have been managed separately here. The problems that cost us most happen where they meet — a sourcing decision that quietly removes capacity, a forecast miss with nowhere to go, a supply shortfall that reaches sales too late to do anything about. Connecting those functions is the job.

You would have a small team: a Director of Purchasing, with buyers at both plants, and a planning manager. Freight you would carry yourself. This is a hands‑on role — we expect you to build the models, run the analysis, and negotiate the contracts personally rather than direct others to.

rebuilding our finished‑goods safety stock model, which today runs largely on months of supply; and turning our existing monthly cross‑functional meeting into a real sales, inventory, and operations planning process.

The role reports to our Senior Vice President of Product & Operations and works closely with sales, both plant leadership teams, product management, engineering, and finance.

• Own the demand plan and master production scheduling across both plants.
• Lead purchasing — steel is our dominant input — through a Director of Purchasing and buyers at each site.
• Rebuild finished‑goods inventory policy from first principles: demand variability, minimum economic run lengths, material lead times, and supplier capacity.
• Own freight strategy and carrier relationships, run the quarterly bids, and hold carriers accountable for pickup and transit performance.
• Connect material availability to the production plan, so we only commit to what supply can actually support — and so problems surface early enough to manage.
• Chair the monthly planning cycle and make service, inventory, and cost trade‑offs explicit with dollar impact, so leadership can decide them deliberately.
• Own the supply chain systems — Relex for planning, our TMS, and the SAP configuration behind purchasing and inventory.
• Build and develop the team, with real depth and succession in each function.

• 10+ years in supply chain at a manufacturer, with hands‑on ownership of at least two of purchasing, demand and production planning, or logistics.
• Experience across more than one plant.
• Someone who does the work. You build the model, run the bid, and write the analysis yourself. If your recent experience has been directing others to do that, this isn't the right fit.
• Strong analytical skills and real working depth in an ERP — we run SAP.
• Comfort owning results that depend on people who don't report to you. We'll give you the forum, the metrics, and the executive backing; the persuading is yours.
• Bachelor's degree in supply chain, engineering, business, or a related field.