- Category Management
- Provides cross-functional team leadership within assigned category(ies); leads cross-functional category team meetings
- Collaborates with manager and cross-functional peers to create long-term supplier strategies and roadmaps. Engages with internal stakeholders to develop and influence category strategy that aligns with long-term business objectives.
- Co-leads direct procurement supplier selection process with collaboration from Supplier Engineering and guidance from manager. Leverages knowledge of strategic sourcing practices to identify a core supply base able to offer lowest total cost of ownership and high-quality product while identifying value improvement opportunities.
- Collaborates with manager to align production supplier requirements and sourcing strategies with those of new product development (NPI) for designated suppliers/categories to ensure uninterrupted material availability, alignment of risk, and cost goals with long term vision for the category / business
- Prioritizes category team projects in collaboration with manager and ensures team goals and objectives are achieved
- Leverages knowledge of commodity trends to propose strategies and educate stakeholders
- Develops and presents category strategy review
- Supplier Performance Management
- Leads supplier scorecarding and supplier business reviews for assigned suppliers
- Proactively collaborates with supply base and procurement team to understand and communicate demand changes and minimize excess inventory or material shortages
- Leads continuous improvement efforts needed with suppliers
- Escalates issues with supplier executive leadership with support and guidance of manager
- Risk and Capacity Management
- Develops mitigation plans and programs for assigned suppliers and critical sub-tier suppliers; collaborates with manager and cross-functional peers to drive implementation
- Leads capacity assessments for assigned suppliers and critical sub-tier suppliers; anticipates long-term risks and installs proactive mitigations
- May serve as project manager for key supplier capacity or risk mitigation initiatives
- Leverages problem solving skills and develops counter-measures to implement long-term solutions to identified problems
- Contract and Cost Management
- Establishes contractual agreements with suppliers and amendments to existing agreements
- Negotiates long-term volume pricing, risk mitigation, and capacity agreements with key suppliers to support Intuitive’s volume growth
- Reviews, administers, and manages long-term purchase order and delivery commitments to designated suppliers as necessary to support production and/or sales requirements within the business
- Leads identification and implementation of cost reduction ideas to achieve year-over-year cost goals within assigned category(ies)
- Operational Management
- Supports plant purchasing by leading negotiations with suppliers to adopt and implement lean sourcing principles to enable 100% material availability and optimization of on-hand inventory levels
- Embraces continuous improvement techniques to drive toward attainment of key purchasing metrics (supplier on-time delivery, quality, risk management, inventory velocity, and cost reduction)
- May lead change management/change order implementation for complex projects
- Supports master data integrity for suppliers and parts
