The Opportunity
Seeking a hands-on Systems Manager – Procurement and Production Planning to lead purchasing, production scheduling, inventory control, and practical workflow automation within our manufacturing operation.
This position is responsible for ensuring materials are available when needed, inventory records are accurate, and production schedules reflect customer demand, available capacity, supplier lead times, and shop-floor constraints.
This is not a remote, reporting-only, or prompt-writing position. The Systems Manager will be accountable for measurable operating results and will work directly with production, customer service, engineering, quality, finance, and suppliers.
What You Will Own
Procurement and Supplier Management
- Purchase assigned raw materials, components, packaging, MRO supplies, and outside services.
- Convert MRP requirements and production priorities into purchase orders, releases, expedites, and supplier follow-up.
- Negotiate pricing, lead times, payment terms, minimum quantities, freight, and supply agreements.
- Develop supplier scorecards covering delivery, quality, responsiveness, cost, and supply risk.
- Establish sourcing alternatives and contingency plans for critical or single-source materials.
- Maintain accurate supplier, purchasing, lead-time, order-policy, and cost data in the ERP/MRP system.
- Partner with Quality, Engineering, Finance, and Operations on supplier qualification, nonconformance, changes, and make-or-buy decisions.
Production Planning and Scheduling
- Build and maintain a practical master production schedule based on customer demand, backlog, inventory, labor, tooling, equipment capacity, and material availability.
- Lead weekly capacity, shortage, and constraint reviews.
- Provide clear daily and weekly production priorities.
- Adjust schedules when demand, supply, quality, staffing, or equipment conditions change.
- Identify material shortages and production bottlenecks before they interrupt operations.
- Develop recovery plans for schedule risks, overdue orders, and customer-impacting issues.
- Balance customer service, throughput, changeovers, work-in-process, inventory, and premium freight.
Inventory Control
- Lead inventory-control practices for raw materials, work-in-process, purchased components, packaging, MRO items, and finished goods.
- Establish and maintain a risk-based cycle-counting program.
- Investigate inventory discrepancies, identify root causes, and ensure corrective actions are completed.
- Improve the accuracy of receiving, issuing, transfers, production reporting, scrap, rework, and shipment transactions.
- Coordinate physical inventory planning, controls, reconciliation, and variance analysis.
- Review safety stocks, reorder points, lot sizes, stocking locations, and order policies.
- Identify excess, obsolete, slow-moving, and at-risk inventory.
AI Enablement and Workflow Automation
- Build and maintain structured Projects in both ChatGPT and Claude using approved instructions, reference files, procedures, and standardized outputs.
- Identify repetitive purchasing, inventory, and scheduling tasks that can be reliably automated.
- Develop or coordinate workflows for shortage analysis, supplier follow-up, purchase-order preparation, cycle-count analysis, inventory exceptions, schedule scenarios, KPI reporting, and management updates.
- Connect approved AI tools to ERP exports, spreadsheets, databases, or workflow platforms when appropriate.
- Create test cases, reconcile automated outputs to source data, document assumptions, and establish human approval steps.
- Monitor workflows for errors, exceptions, or changes in output quality.
- Document processes and train backup users so workflows are secure, repeatable, and not dependent on one individual.
- Protect confidential company, customer, supplier, employee, pricing, and technical information.
Required Qualifications
- Five or more years of progressive experience in purchasing, materials planning, inventory control, production planning, or scheduling within a discrete manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated experience managing supplier and material execution, inventory controls, and a constraint-based production schedule.
- Strong working knowledge of:
- ERP and MRP systems
- Bills of material and routings
- Inventory transactions and controls
- Cycle counting
- Supplier and production lead times
- Capacity planning
- Planning parameters
- Advanced Excel skills, including structured data, lookups, pivot tables, error checking, and repeatable analysis.
- Practical experience creating and maintaining Projects in both ChatGPT and Claude.
- Evidence of automating at least two repeatable business workflows from source data through reviewed output.
- Strong negotiation, problem-solving, written communication, prioritization, and cross-functional follow-through.
- Ability and willingness to work full-time on-site and spend meaningful time with production employees, inventory, and process owners.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in supply chain, operations, business, engineering, or a related field. Equivalent experience will be considered.
- Experience in metalworking, machining, forging, assembly, packaging, or another high-mix discrete manufacturing environment.
- APICS/ASCM CPIM or CSCP certification, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience with Power Query, Power BI, SQL, Python, APIs, Power Automate, Zapier, Make, or similar automation tools.
- Experience improving inventory accuracy, planning data, supplier performance, schedule stability, backlog, or manufacturing lead times.
- Experience moving a workflow from individual use to sustained team adoption.
How to Apply
Please submit your resume and a brief description of one purchasing, inventory, production-planning, or operational workflow you have automated.
Your description should include:
- The original business problem
- The source data used
- The tools used
- The review or approval controls
- The measurable result
- What you would improve if completing the project again
Do not submit confidential information belonging to a current or former employer.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit, and business needs without unlawful discrimination. Reasonable accommodations are available for qualified individuals with disabilities.
Pay: $90,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Retirement plan
- Vision insurance
Experience:
- purchasing, planning, scheduling: 5 years (Preferred)
Ability to Commute:
- Sturgis, MI 49091 (Required)
Work Location: In person
