Buyer / Planner

About the role

This position plays an important role in supporting manufacturing operations by purchasing materials and components, managing supplier relationships, maintaining inventory accuracy, and ensuring materials are available to meet production and customer requirements.

Responsibilities

• Purchase materials, components, supplies, and services needed to support production and business operations.
• Review MRP reports, purchase requisitions, inventory requirements, and production demand.
• Create, manage, and expedite purchase orders to ensure materials are delivered on time.
• Evaluate suppliers based on pricing, quality, lead time, and delivery performance.
• Negotiate pricing and maintain productive relationships with vendors.
• Maintain blanket purchase orders and monitor supplier performance.
• Resolve supplier issues involving late deliveries, pricing discrepancies, RMAs, credits, and replacement materials.
• Maintain purchasing Kanban systems within a Lean manufacturing environment.
• Monitor inventory levels, safety stock, Kanban replenishment, kitting, and material staging.
• Perform cycle counts and support physical inventory audits.
• Investigate inventory and purchase-price variances.
• Identify and help resolve excess, obsolete, and slow-moving inventory.
• Work with production and planning teams to ensure material availability.
• Provide Sales with accurate product costs, delivery dates, and lead-time information.
• Participate in Lean manufacturing, 5S, and continuous-improvement activities.
• Identify opportunities to improve purchasing, inventory control, and material flow.

Requirements

The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience with purchasing, production planning, inventory control, and ERP/MRP systems in a manufacturing environment.