Materials Manager
Location: Marietta, OH
Duration: Full time, Direct Hire
Salary: Starting at $95,000 annually, with potential for a higher salary based on experience.
Travel Required: Up to 20% (supplier visits, strategic sourcing reviews, supply chain conferences)
POSITION SUMMARY
The Materials Manager is the on-site supply chain leader for the power distribution assembly operation, responsible for ensuring that the right materials are available at the right time to support every active project — from configure-to-order quick-ship programs through complex, long-horizon engineered-to-order builds. This is a hands-on leadership role with direct supervisory responsibility for the Buyer Planner team and a mandate to operate at both the tactical and strategic levels of supply chain management simultaneously.
At the tactical level, the Materials Manager owns the day-to-day performance of material availability, inventory health, and supplier delivery compliance across the facility. At the strategic level, the Materials Manager partners with the Director of Supply Chain to position strategic materials, develop supply chain resilience for critical commodities, and drive inventory investment decisions that balance working capital efficiency against production continuity.
The Materials Manager is the critical integration point between supply chain and operations — working daily with Project Managers to align material plans to project schedules, engaging Sales early on new opportunities to provide realistic lead time input and collaborating with Production to ensure the shop floor never stops for a preventable material shortage. This role requires both the technical depth to understand MRP/ERP-driven planning and the leadership credibility to hold a team and a supplier base accountable to high performance standards.
ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
The Materials Manager operates at the center of a cross-functional network. Key relationships and the nature of each interface are defined below:
- Director of Supply Chain - Dotted-line strategic alignment — category strategy, supplier positioning, make/buy decisions, and capital inventory investment
- Buyer Planners (direct) - Day-to-day supervision of purchasing and planning execution; performance management; workload balancing across project portfolio
- Project Managers (peer) - Collaboration to ensure material plans align to project schedules; joint escalation on supply risk and delivery risk
- Sales (peer) - Early engagement on new opportunities; material lead time input for order acknowledgement; demand visibilityc
- Production / Operations - Material availability to support assembly schedules; shortage resolution; dock-to-floor coordination
- Quality Engineering (peer) - Supplier qualification, NCM disposition, SCAR process, and incoming inspection coordination
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Buyer Planner Team Leadership & Development
- Directly supervise, coach, and develop the Buyer Planner team; set clear performance expectations, conduct regular 1:1s, and deliver structured performance reviews against defined KPIs.
- Assign and balance workload across Buyer Planners by commodity, project type, and volume; adjust portfolio assignments as business needs and team capability evolve.
- Ensure Buyer Planners are operating as disciplined ERP/MRP power users — executing all procurement and planning actions through the system, maintaining item master data accuracy, and acting on exception messages with urgency and precision.
- Monitor Buyer Planner performance against the 10 inventory turns per year target at the individual portfolio level and in aggregate; coach underperforming planners and escalate persistent gaps to operations leadership.
- Develop team capability through structured mentoring, cross-training, and exposure to supplier negotiations, commodity strategy, and project-level material planning.
- Identify and close skills gaps within the team; support training and certification pursuits (APICS CPIM, CSCP) as part of individual development plans.
- Maintain coverage plans for team absences; ensure no project or supplier relationship goes unmanaged during vacations, leaves, or turnover.
2. Project-Aligned Material Planning & PM Collaboration
- Collaborate daily with Project Managers — both Senior and Junior — to ensure material availability plans are aligned to active project schedules, acknowledged ship dates, and production release timelines.
- Participate in project kick-off meetings for all new ETO orders to review BOM, identify long-lead items, assess supply risk, and establish material availability commitments that support the project schedule.
- Provide material availability assessments and long-lead item status to the Senior Project Manager as input to the order acknowledgement lead time determination — ensuring no ship date is committed without a validated supply chain view.
- Own the material shortage escalation process: when a Buyer Planner identifies a shortage or supply risk that threatens a project schedule, the Materials Manager leads the cross-functional response — engaging suppliers, evaluating alternatives, and communicating risk to the PM and operations leadership.
- Review the active project portfolio weekly with the Project Management team; align material critical path with project critical path and identify any supply chain actions required to protect customer delivery commitments.
- Ensure the Junior PM's quick-ship and CTO order portfolio is continuously supported by appropriate finished goods levels, pre-positioned materials, and responsive Buyer Planner attention.
3. Sales Collaboration & Demand Visibility
- Engage with Sales at the opportunity stage for complex or large orders — before a quote is issued — to provide supply chain input on long-lead material availability, supplier capacity constraints, and realistic lead time expectations.
- Participate in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) meetings; provide supply chain perspective on demand forecasts, backlog trends, and capacity constraints that affect material positioning decisions.
- Maintain a forward-looking demand signal from the sales pipeline; use this visibility to pre-position strategic materials, initiate early supplier engagement, and reduce lead time risk on anticipated orders.
- Support the sales team's customer commitments by providing clear, accurate, and timely supply chain data — and by pushing back transparently when proposed ship dates are not achievable given current supply conditions.
- Collaborate with Sales on customer-specific stocking programs, blanket order agreements, and consignment inventory arrangements that improve service levels and reduce order-to-ship cycle time.
4. Strategic Material Positioning — Director of Supply Chain Alignment
- Partner with the Director of Supply Chain to identify, classify, and develop strategic positioning plans for critical materials — components with long lead times, single-source risk, high price volatility, or outsized impact on production continuity.
- Maintain and execute a strategic inventory investment plan for long-lead electromechanical components (specialty breakers, bus assemblies, power electronic modules, custom enclosures, transformers) aligned to the forward demand plan and approved by the Director of Supply Chain.
- Identify single-source and sole-source dependencies within the Buyer Planner portfolios; develop and present risk mitigation options (dual sourcing, safety stock, supplier-managed inventory, LTAs) to the Director of Supply Chain for decision.
- Support commodity strategy development led by the Director of Supply Chain and Commodity Managers; provide facility-level consumption data, supplier performance history, and demand forecasts to inform category-level decisions.
- Execute approved commodity strategies at the facility level: implement preferred supplier agreements, enforce pricing frameworks, drive contract compliance, and report performance against strategy targets.
- Manage the facility-level make/buy analysis process for components where internal fabrication may be an alternative to purchased supply; present findings and recommendations to the Director of Supply Chain and operations leadership.
- Anticipate and proactively communicate market conditions — commodity price trends, supply constraints, geopolitical risks, tariff impacts — that could affect the facility's material cost or availability, with recommended mitigations.
5. Inventory Health & Working Capital Management
- Own the facility's inventory performance in aggregate: monitor inventory turns, excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory levels, days of supply, and working capital tied up in raw material and WIP across all Buyer Planner portfolios.
- Drive the team toward the 10 inventory turns per year target at the facility level; identify systemic barriers to inventory velocity and lead corrective initiatives.
- Chair the monthly E&O review: classify excess and obsolete inventory by root cause, assign disposition actions (return to supplier, redeployment to other projects, write-off recommendation), and track to closure.
- Establish and maintain inventory policy for the facility: safety stock methodology, reorder point logic, lot sizing rules, and cycle count program — ensuring policies are consistently applied and ERP parameters reflect current reality.
- Lead the annual physical inventory process; develop the count plan, assign team responsibilities, reconcile results, and present findings to operations and finance leadership.
- Balance the competing demands of inventory turns, material availability, and working capital investment; make and defend inventory investment decisions with data, not instinct.
6. Supplier Performance Management
- Own the facility's supplier performance management program: track, report, and act on on-time delivery (SOTD), quality (PPM), lead time accuracy, and responsiveness metrics across the active supplier base.
- Conduct structured quarterly business reviews with key suppliers; bring performance data, identify improvement areas, and establish written action plans with measurable commitments.
- Manage supplier escalations that exceed the Buyer Planner's authority: engage supplier leadership, demand corrective action, and escalate to the Director of Supply Chain when supplier performance threatens production continuity.
- Collaborate with Quality Engineering on supplier corrective action requests (SCARs); ensure root cause analysis is complete, corrective actions are implemented, and supplier return-to-green timelines are tracked.
- Support the supplier qualification process for new suppliers identified through commodity strategy development or sole-source risk mitigation efforts; coordinate with Quality Engineering and Application Engineering on technical qualification requirements.
- Negotiate or oversee the negotiation of pricing agreements, blanket purchase orders, and long-term agreements (LTAs) with strategic suppliers; ensure agreements are documented, compliant, and maintained in the ERP system.
7. ERP / MRP Governance & Data Integrity
- Serve as the supply chain owner of ERP data integrity for the facility: ensure item master accuracy, BOM alignment, supplier lead times, and planning parameters reflect current reality at all times.
- Establish and enforce ERP usage standards for the Buyer Planner team; all procurement and planning actions must be system-driven — off-system workarounds are identified and eliminated.
- Review MRP output at the portfolio level on a regular cadence; identify systemic planning issues (parameter drift, demand signal distortion, BOM errors) and drive root cause resolution.
- Partner with IT and the ERP system administrator on supply chain module improvements, report development, and system configuration changes that improve planning effectiveness.
- Champion data accuracy as a cultural standard within the team: if the data is wrong, the decisions are wrong.
8. Reporting, Metrics & Continuous Improvement
- Prepare and present a weekly supply chain performance dashboard to operations leadership covering material availability to schedule, shortage status, supplier SOTD, inventory turns, and E&O exposure.
- Present a monthly supply chain scorecard to the VP of Operations and Director of Supply Chain covering all KPIs with trend analysis, root cause commentary, and forward-looking risk assessments.
- Lead or sponsor continuous improvement initiatives within the materials function: ERP parameter optimization, supplier lead time reduction, dock-to-stock cycle time improvement, and inventory footprint reduction.
- Drive lean supply chain principles within the facility: eliminate waste in receiving, inspection, storage, and kitting processes; apply 5S to the warehouse and stockroom; reduce material handling steps between receipt and point of use.
- Benchmark facility supplies chain performance against industry standards; identify capability gaps and present improvement roadmaps to leadership.
The Materials Manager will be measured against the following metrics, reported monthly to the VP of Operations and Director of Supply Chain:
- Inventory Turns - ? 10 turns/year across Buyer Planner portfolios (aggregate)
- Material On-Time Availability - ? 98% of project material available by required-on-floor date
- Supplier On-Time Delivery (SOTD) - ? 95% of PO line items delivered on or before PO promise date
- Purchase Price Variance (PPV) - Favorable or neutral vs. standard cost; negative PPV trend escalated
- Excess & Obsolete Inventory (E&O) - E&O value reduced quarter-over-quarter; no unreviewed E&O > 90 days
- Shortage Frequency - Zero production line stops attributable to preventable material shortages
- Supplier Quality (PPM) - Incoming defect rate trending downward; SCAR closure within 30 days
- Strategic Material Positioning - Critical long-lead items stocked to agreed safety levels 100% of the time
QUALIFICATIONS:
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain Management, Business, Operations Management, Engineering, or a related field; advanced degree a plus.
- 7–10+ years of progressive supply chain experience in a manufacturing environment, including a minimum of 3 years in a supervisory or team lead role overseeing buyers, planners, or buyer planners.
- Demonstrated experience managing material planning and procurement in an electromechanical, electrical equipment, or industrial manufacturing environment; power distribution industry experience strongly preferred.
- Advanced proficiency with ERP/MRP systems (SAP, Oracle, Epicor, Infor, IFS, or comparable); must be capable of diagnosing and resolving MRP planning issues, not just reporting on them.
- Proven track record of driving inventory turn improvement while maintaining or improving material availability — candidates must be able to quantify results from prior roles.
- Experience managing supplier performance programs including QBRs, SCARs, and supplier development initiatives.
- Demonstrated ability to operate effectively at both the tactical (daily shortage management, Buyer Planner supervision) and strategic (commodity positioning, supply risk, capital investment) levels simultaneously.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration skills; demonstrated track record of working effectively with project management, sales, engineering, production, and finance.
- Excellent communication skills — able to translate supply chain complexity into clear, actionable information for operations leaders, sales teams, and customers.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and data analysis tools for inventory, spend, and supplier performance reporting.
Preferred
- APICS CPIM or CSCP certification; ISM C.P.M. or CPSM.
- Experience with power distribution products: PDCs, STS, RPPs, switchgear, UPS systems, and associated electromechanical components.
- Familiarity with UL, ANSI, NEMA, NEC, and IEC standards relevant to power distribution equipment and their impact on sourcing and supplier qualification.
- Experience developing and executing commodity strategies for electromechanical components (breakers, bus duct, transformers, enclosures, power electronics).
- Lean / Six Sigma Green Belt or Black Belt; experience leading kaizen events in a supply chain or warehouse environment.
- Experience with strategic inventory programs: vendor-managed inventory (VMI), consignment agreements, supplier-stocked buffer programs, or blanket PO/call-off arrangements.
- Experience with import compliance, customs, and international supplier management.
CORE COMPETENCIES
- Supply Chain Leadership & Team Development
- Strategic Material Positioning & Risk Management
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- MRP/ERP Mastery & Data Governance
- Inventory Optimization (Turns vs. Availability)
- Supplier Relationship & Performance Management
- Project-Aligned Material Planning
- Demand Sensing & Capacity Awareness
- Escalation Judgment & Crisis Management
- Continuous Improvement Leadership
- Commercial Acumen & Cost Management
- Executive Communication & Reporting
WORKING CONDITIONS & PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
- On-site presence is required daily; this is not a remote or hybrid role. Visibility on the manufacturing floor is a core component of the position.
- Regular time in the production facility, warehouse, and receiving areas; exposure to moderate noise, industrial equipment, and electrical assemblies is routine.
- Travel up to 20%: supplier visits, strategic sourcing reviews, industry conferences, and occasional customer engagement.
- Must be available for escalated supply chain issues outside of standard business hours when production continuity is at risk.
- Physically able to walk manufacturing floor areas, access storage locations, and participate in physical inventory activities.
Pay: From $95,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- Can you describe your experience managing material planning and procurement within an electromechanical, electrical equipment, or industrial manufacturing environment? Please include the ERP/MRP systems you’ve used and an example of how you identified and resolved a planning or MRP issue.
- Tell us about a time when you improved inventory turns while maintaining or improving material availability. What specific actions did you take, and what measurable results did you achieve?
- Describe your experience managing supplier performance and cross-functional supply chain initiatives. How have you handled supplier accountability (QBRs, SCARs, supplier development) while collaborating with teams such as engineering, production, sales, and finance to support operational and strategic goals?
Education:
Experience:
- Supply chain experience in a manufacturing environment: 7 years (Required)
- Supervisory or team lead role : 3 years (Required)
Ability to Commute:
- Marietta, OH 45750 (Required)
Willingness to travel:
Work Location: In person
