Manager, Supplier Quality Assurance & External Manufacturing

About the role

Blommer has been providing delicious, high-quality chocolate and cocoa products to customers since 1939. Built as a family business, we are continuing to grow and are looking for motivated and reliable associates to help in our mission of Bringing Chocolate to Life!

Responsibilities

• Own Corporate Supplier Quality strategy and multi-year roadmap.
• Establish Supplier Quality Policies, Standards and governance processes.
• Lead and enhance the supplier approval process, including risk assessment, audit oversight, and documentation review (via TraceGains and other platforms).
• Develop supplier scorecards and KPI dashboards to drive continuous improvement.
• Develop supplier and external manufacturers' corrective action and performance improvement plans.
• Define corporate food safety standards for external manufacturing, including suppliers and co-manufacturers. Ensure GFSI compliance, regulatory requirements, and internal policies.
• Manage CAPA processes and cross-functional alignment.
• Lead cross functional strategic initiatives.
• Ensure and enhance supplier and external manufacturing audit schedule compliance.
• Serve as a liaison between Procurement, R&D, and Quality teams to ensure sourcing decisions align with Blommer’s quality standards.
• Partner with the Corporate Regulatory and ChocDoc teams to manage compliance for customer-facing documents.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to QA team members.
• Own globally the Trace Gains systems, support digital tools and dashboards.
• Determine system strategy, governance, KPI’s and enhancements to the supplier management platforms (e.g., TraceGains) to streamline workflows and ensure accurate, real-time data.
• Analyze trends and drive systemic improvements: Standardize supplier approval and monitoring processes.
• Establish and maintain quality oversight programs for external manufacturers and co-manufacturers.
• Lead qualification of new external manufacturing locations from a quality perspective.
• Review performance metrics and quality trends for external manufacturers.
• Lead escalation and resolution of quality incidents involving external manufacturers.
• Own the corporate ingredient and packaging specification management system, including development, approval, governance, and change control.
• Establish and maintain specification standards that support product quality, food safety, regulatory compliance, and operational requirements.
• Lead cross functional review and approval of new or revised specifications.
• Ensure alignment of specifications, across suppliers, manufacturing sites and external manufacturers/co-manufacturers.
• Supplier quality performance metrics demonstrate year-over-year improvement.
• Supplier and external manufacturer corrective actions are implemented effectively and sustained.
• Ingredient and packaging specifications remain current, accurate, and aligned with regulatory, customer, manufacturing, and food safety requirements.
• Specification changes are reviewed and implemented through an effective change-management process.
• Supplier quality systems provide accurate, timely, and actionable business insights.
• Supplier approval and monitoring processes are standardized across the organization.

Note: The employer reserves the right to change or assign other duties to this position.

Requirements

• General office environment with majority of time using computer.
• Manual & Visual Requirements: Keyboard and mouse usage. Visual