Category Manager- Mechanics

POSITION SUMMARY

The Category Manager, Mechanics is responsible for developing and executing category and supplier strategies that support business objectives, operational excellence, and sustainable material cost productivity. This role leads strategic sourcing, supplier relationship management, contract negotiations, cost optimization initiatives, and risk mitigation activities across assigned categories, such as sheet metal, machining parts, castings, extrusions and motion mechanics. Working closely with Operations, Purchasing, Quality and R&D, the Category Manager drives towards best-in-class supply chain that can provide timely execution of materials, quality, and cost goals. This individual must possess outstanding cross-functional leadership skills, strong negotiations skills and the ability to develop and effectively implement countermeasures to address critical issues.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develops and drives supply chain strategy and objectives, including procurement, cost reduction, new material introduction and supplier selection.
• Owns supplier relationship management and visits major vendors to discuss and negotiate to drive strategic goals and maintain good relationships as required.
• Leads and participates in initiatives that review spending and manufacturing activity to identify ways to reduce costs while maintaining or improving quality, delivery, and inventory.
• Manages his/her supply base to ensure leveraging of purchasing strength to support operations excellence and materials cost reduction goals.
• Develops and leads negotiations for necessary contracts to support robust material flow including such things as: year over year savings, quality, inventory replenishment systems, Kanban, etc. with partnership with supply chain team.
• Manage suppliers and ensure contractual coverage to maximize working capital, inventory, quality, and delivery.
• Develop new supply chain sources to drive competitive advantage through differentiation and understanding of market drivers.
• Conducts market research, competitive analysis, overall market trends to quantify needed changes, improvements in material and commodity management strategy.
• Provides R&D support for sustaining engineering and represents Procurement in new product introduction programs.
• Develops, manages, and drives Procurement processes, especially the ones related to Quality Management System.
• Partners with Quality to reduce internal and external quality and out-of-box failures. Support Quality through management of supplier quality rating programs, resolution of non-conformities, and supplier audits.
• Conducts supplier risk management by reviewing sourcing restrictions, revenue impacts, supplier evaluation ratings, and supplier stability indicator scores. Use evaluation to develop plans for high-risk parties.
• Actively engaged to understand materials contribution to production issues, quality constraints, and sales issues and actively participate in improvements and solutions.
• Understands of compliance with all procurement domestic and international laws including import/export compliance.
• Performs other duties and tasks assigned by supervisor/manager.