Job Title: Purchasing Manager
Job Duration: Direct Hire
Location: McHenry County, IL
Pay Range: $65k-$70k/year
Job Description:
- Develop and execute purchasing strategies that support company goals for cost, quality, delivery, cash flow, and production reliability.
- Negotiate supplier pricing, terms, lead times, freight arrangements, minimum order quantities, and contract terms to achieve measurable cost savings.
- Actively challenge supplier price increases by requiring justification, market data, competitive quotes, alternative sourcing options, or productivity-based offsets.
- Identify cost-reduction opportunities through alternate vendors, competitive bidding, value analysis, volume consolidation, bracket pricing, improved payment terms, freight optimization, and make-versus-buy analysis.
- Use bracket pricing intelligently to determine when larger purchases create real savings versus when they unnecessarily increase inventory and cash burden.
- Work with Finance and Operations to reduce raw material and purchased component costs as a percentage of total cost of goods sold.
- Track material cost trends, commodity changes, supplier pricing behavior, lead-time changes, and availability risks.
- Ensure purchasing decisions are based on production need, customer demand, job priority, lead time, cash impact, and inventory position — not habit or convenience.
- Manage purchasing activity to support lean inventory levels while protecting production schedules.
- Use ERP/MRP data, open order reports, inventory levels, job requirements, historical usage, supplier lead times, and production schedules to determine proper buy quantities and timing.
- Implement and maintain disciplined just-in-time purchasing patterns where appropriate, avoiding unnecessary early buys that consume cash before materials are needed.
- Identify slow-moving, excess, obsolete, duplicate, and over-purchased inventory and recommend corrective actions.
- Work with Scheduling, Production, Engineering, and Finance to align purchasing activity with actual production timing and customer delivery requirements.
- Monitor inventory turns, days on hand, stockout risk, min/max levels, safety stock assumptions, and reorder points.
- Help establish practical inventory policies for high-use items, long-lead components, customer-specific materials, and custom engineered parts.
- Develop and maintain a strong supplier base for castings, machined components, fabricated parts, motors, bearings, belts, fasteners, coatings, raw materials, outside processing, and other production-critical items.
- Identify, qualify, and maintain both primary and secondary suppliers for key materials, components, and services.
- Reduce single-source risk by building alternate sourcing options for critical castings, machining, and long-lead components.
- Lead supplier qualification efforts in cooperation with Engineering, Quality, and Production.
- Evaluate suppliers based on price, quality, delivery performance, responsiveness, technical capability, capacity, financial stability, and willingness to support custom manufacturing requirements.
- Develop suppliers capable of meeting company requirements for engineered-to-order production, customer specifications, documentation, certifications, and technical compliance.
- Maintain an approved vendor list and ensure supplier records are accurate and current.
- Monitor supplier performance using formal scorecards, including on-time delivery, quality
- performance, pricing competitiveness, responsiveness, corrective action performance, and lead-time reliability.
- Address late deliveries, nonconforming materials, supplier communication failures, missed commitments, and recurring performance issues.
- Negotiate recovery plans, expedited shipments, supplier corrective actions, credits, replacements, or commercial concessions when supplier issues impact production.
- Partner with Quality to resolve supplier defects, rejected materials, documentation issues, and corrective action requests.
- Partner with Engineering to ensure suppliers understand drawings, specifications, tolerances, materials, coatings, and customer-specific requirements.
- Conduct regular supplier reviews and recommend whether vendors should be retained, developed, reduced, replaced, or removed from the approved supplier base.
- Ensure materials, components, outside services, and purchased parts are available to support production schedules and customer delivery commitments.
- Maintain accurate purchase orders, confirmations, delivery dates, pricing, terms, and supplier communications in the ERP/MRP system.
- Proactively follow up with suppliers to confirm delivery commitments and identify risks before they disrupt production.
- Support resolution of receiving discrepancies, invoice mismatches, pricing errors, damaged goods, freight issues, and supplier documentation problems.
- Work closely with Production Planning, Scheduling, Project Management, Engineering, Quality, and Finance to support job execution.
- Participate in production meetings as needed to communicate material availability, supplier constraints, cost issues, and recovery plans.
- Develop, document, and improve purchasing procedures, supplier qualification processes, PO workflows, and vendor performance review systems.
- Ensure purchasing practices comply with company policies, customer flow-down requirements, quality requirements, and applicable regulatory obligations.
- Support future quality and compliance initiatives such as ISO 9001, AS9100, ITAR, customer-specific requirements, and supplier documentation controls where applicable.
- Improve purchasing cycle times, quote response times, vendor communication, PO accuracy, and internal coordination.
- Recommend ERP/MRP improvements, reporting tools, dashboards, and purchasing controls to improve visibility and accountability.
Qualifications:
- Minimum of 5–7 years of purchasing, procurement, sourcing, or supply chain experience in a manufacturing environment.
- Experience purchasing for custom, engineered-to-order, industrial, fabrication, machining, casting, metalworking, equipment manufacturing, or similar environments.
- Strong understanding of inventory control, material planning, ERP/MRP systems, lead times, reorder points, min/max planning, and production-driven purchasing.
- Proven ability to negotiate pricing, terms, lead times, supplier commitments, and cost reductions.
- Experience sourcing and managing vendors in casting, machining, fabrication, raw materials, outside processing, and industrial components strongly preferred.
- Ability to read and understand bills of material, drawings, specifications, material requirements, and production schedules.
- Strong analytical skills with the ability to evaluate pricing, usage history, supplier quotes, inventory levels, and purchase timing.
- Experience developing primary and secondary supplier strategies.
- Strong communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally with Production, Engineering, Proficiency with ERP/MRP systems and Microsoft Excel.
- Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Business, Operations, Engineering, or related field preferred; equivalent manufacturing purchasing experience will be considered.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with castings, machined parts, fabricated components, motors, bearings, steel, stainless steel, aluminum, coatings, fasteners, and industrial equipment components.
- Experience in custom manufacturing, rotating equipment, blowers, fans, heavy fabrication, industrial machinery, aerospace, defense, energy, mining, or other high reliability manufacturing environments.
- Familiarity with supplier quality systems, corrective actions, certificates of conformance, material certifications, inspection requirements, and customer flow-down requirements.
- Experience supporting ISO 9001, AS9100, ITAR, or similar quality/compliance environments.
- Experience implementing supplier scorecards, approved vendor lists, cost-reduction projects, inventory controls, and purchasing KPIs.
Pay: $65,000.00 - $70,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
Work Location: In person
