Sr. Purchasing Specialist

Responsible for leading strategic procurement efforts, growing key supplier relationships, and driving cost optimization across the supply chain. Oversees the entire purchasing process, from demand forecasting to material delivery, ensuring seamless integration with organizational goals. Proactively identifies and mitigates risk, developing policies to address recurring issues and improve overall procurement practices. Analyzes market trends and insights, recommending strategic business decisions to management. Identifies the need for new materials and suppliers based on collaboration with R&D, production, and sales departments, actively researching new opportunities and leading the implementation process.

POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES

• Expertly buy materials based on current and future demand of inventory, jobs, sales, or requisitions.
• Analyze demand suggestions, ensuring accuracy and making optimization suggestions, such as consolidation of materials or volume changes. Identify the root-cause of any information discrepancies to resolve both specific and systematic problems.
• Identify the best supplier to purchase from to achieve optimal cost, lead time, and quality requirements, while balancing supplier relationships. Use good judgement to determine when to employ buying and negotiation techniques to efficiently achieve purchasing and manufacturing order objectives.
• Oversee the end-to-end procurement process, including freight coordination, communication with suppliers, and rigorous follow-up to ensure timely and accurate material delivery.
• Collaborate with customer service and manufacturing teams to proactively adjust material schedules or develop contingency plans for potential delivery delays.
• Develop and lead implementation of advanced procurement strategies for materials, such as chemicals and packaging.

Optimize procurement practices by analyzing lead times, cost breaks, and usage rates of materials. Recommend and implement strategic adjustments to stock levels and purchase order quantities, including consolidating materials and suppliers to enhance volume efficiencies, reduce costs, and streamline operations.

Manage existing and develop new contracts, such as blanket orders, stocking agreements, rebate programs, etc.... to strengthen key partnerships and ensure alignment with supply stability and cost reduction goals.

Create contingency plans to ensure business continuity for contract manufacturers and single sourced or highly volatile materials, to prevent outages or market adjustments.

Monitor and report on purchasing performance, market conditions, and supplier performance; participate in department metric creation and performance monitoring.

Evaluate top suppliers with quarterly scorecard reviews, comparing historic scorecard trends and creating action plans to improve performance in targeted areas.

Review and generate actionable reports related to purchase order turnaround time, inventory levels, and market trends to support strategic decision-making.

Analyze market indexes to inform creation of cost saving strategies based on differences between current pricing and industry trends.

Investigate variances on reconciliation reports of deviated material pricing or quantities with accounting team. Pursue invoicing or quantity adjustment with suppliers as needed.

Establish, cultivate, and maintain strategic relationships with key suppliers, particularly in the specialty chemicals sector.

Spearhead complex negotiations of material pricing, contracts, and service agreements to reduce overall costs, improve payment terms, and ensure supply stability.

Monitor and enforce suppliers' compliance with on-time delivery goals, terms, conditions, supply contracts, and product specifications, taking corrective action as needed.

Engage with key suppliers in business meetings to gather market updates and supplier information. Represent Cortec professionally, encouraging mutual growth and advocating effectively for the company.

Identify and qualify new suppliers to expand product lines, while also leveraging existing supplier relationships to introduce value-added offerings, including innovations in sustainable materials.

Bachelor's degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, supply chain management, or a related field like business or management especially with an operations management focus.

A supply chain management certification like a CPSM or CSCP is desirable.