Commodities Specialist

About the role

With over 85 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace and defense, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency.

Job summary

This position involves implementing strategic sourcing strategies (defined by the global category leader) and optimizing procurement processes in North America for one or more assigned categories of spend.

Responsibilities

• Supports the development, implementation, and governance of sourcing strategies for assigned commodity categories; including supplier selection, supplier relationship development, supplier performance optimization, pricing & contract negotiations, leveraging sourcing tools to secure optimum value, understanding & mitigating supply chain risk
• Communicates and ensures proper governance of the corporate-wide Sourcing strategy
• Key Metrics & Outcomes include: Cost Reduction, DPO, Supplier On-Time Delivery & Quality, Supplier Lead Time Reduction, Supplier Count Reduction
• Develops knowledge and understanding of cost drivers and manufacturing/service processes related to assigned commodity categories and leverages this knowledge to optimize value for Kennametal
• Drives to develop and understand internal stakeholder requirements and uses this information to assist in recommendation of sourcing decisions

Requirements

• Education: Bachelor's Degree (required) in Supply Chain, Business, or Engineering; MBA (preferred)
• Experience: 1+ years in Strategic Sourcing (required) with 3 years of Manufacturing experience (preferred)
• Maintains the highest level of integrity, ethics, commitment to safety and compliance to KMT's code of conduct; role models these behaviors for suppliers
• Proven experience in leading and developing the sourcing capabilities of the team, comfortable leading through influence, skilled in all forms of communication
• Understands organization of internal customer groups, key users and characteristics of these customers. Drives to understand customer requirements and uses this information as an input into sourcing decisions. Develops and fosters mutually beneficial customer relationships
• Skilled in analytics; leverages ERP software & raw data to organize and prioritize information for decision making
• Supports project management function in designing, planning, and managing projects to deliver value-added solutions within defined time and cost parameters
• Understands financial concepts including invoicing, accounts payable and other financial business processes. Interprets financial data, analyzes cost structures, and determines financial impacts of decisions
• Proficiency: MS Office, Excel, Word & PowerPoint (required), SAP (preferred)

Location: Hybrid – Either Pittsburgh or Latrobe, PA