Purchasing Manager

Job Title: Purchasing Manager

Job Profile: Manager, Purchasing

Reports To: Director, Supply Chain Planning

Group/Division: CCG/RSD

Career Track/Band: Management Band 7

Location: FR Illkirch or UK Loughborough

Background:

The Research and Safety Market Division, represented by the Fisher Scientific brand, markets and sells a complete portfolio of laboratory products to its key customer base around the world that includes Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Industrial organizations conducting scientific research and manufacturing as well Academic and Government institutions that have laboratories. As a channel to the market for a broad portfolio of products, the Research and Safety Market Division transacts with and represents the product lines of thousands of supplier/manufacturers in the laboratory and production space, both internal and external to Thermo Fisher Scientific. The Supply Chain Planning team is currently responsible for developing European approach to purchasing in order to maximise service to our customer, whilst optimizing our inventory / working capital levels.

Position Summary:

The Purchasing manager is a central role in the Supply Chain Planning function. The role is responsible for leading a pan European purchasing operations organization ensuring supply execution through the supply chain network, by proactive collaboration with key suppliers and developing effective and consistent purchasing processes. This position is also accountable for the execution within a supply chain that is made of 1800+ suppliers, 1,6M finished goods products, ~8 distribution centers, ~90M inventory, ~40 employees through 2 direct reports.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage the team as a Role Model Leader: being accountable for the engagement, performance, compensation and the development of the team
• Order placement with supplier based on planning lead times, and managing all relevant activities in ERP system
• Order confirmation to ensure high level of supplier response and up to date delivery dates
• Following the supply process (order-2-supply); incoming goods transaction, tracking outstanding deliveries
• Proactively resolving supply constraint to protect service.
• Collaboration with the various departments in operations, Transport, Product management and finance to resolve process issue which are preventing the flow of product supply
• Developing robust improvement plans with supplier to improve flow of product supply, accuracy of lead time and order confirmation & status update data exchange.
• Optimise stock holding and minimise risk of excess and obsolescence
• Support customer service & sales team on key customer accounts and critical customer supply issue.
• Improve the speed and quality of where is my stuff enquires, with up to date data in IBS or responses to Customer Service enquiries
• Leading process improvements to ensure one common European purchasing process and increase transactional efficiency.
• Management of purchasing master data.

Minimum Requirements / Qualifications

• A Bachelor’s Degree in Supply Chain / Logistics, Business Management or a related field is required;
• 5 years of finished goods purchasing experience involving a broad supply base with a large product offering. Experience in a highly complex distribution or retail model strongly preferred.
• Must have previous strong exposure to inventory control/management/reduction in a high SKU environment.
• In depth understand of ERP purchasing functionality.
• Experienced in process improvement and managing change
• Experience in relationship management with suppliers
• Must be English speaking and able to work in teams with remotely located team members

Competencies

• Results oriented, metrics driven leader with a root cause, permanent fix approach, continuous improvement approach with high sense of urgency and self-motivation
• Excellent interpersonal, customer orientation and problem solving, can-do attitude
• Must have experience and be comfortable in a highly structured/procedural environment and in an international matrix organization
• Multi-tasking experience and flexibility to address immediate priorities and still manage deadlines with longer-term projects and strategic initiatives.
• Strong analytic capability able to identify patterns and trends within data which will require Excel and Business Intelligence systems knowledge.
• Willingness to travel up to 20% (depending on location) some international is expected.