Category Manager

POSITION:
Category Manager

Job Description

Location
:
Sourcing Department—Supply Chain—World. Headquarters - Easton, PA

Victaulic is a global leader in mechanical pipe joining innovations and is the world's leading producer of mechanical pipe joining solutions. The company has 13 manufacturing facilities and 28 branches worldwide with 4,400 employees who speak 43 languages across the globe. With over 2000 global patents, Victaulic solutions are at work in more than 140 countries across diverse business lines including oil and gas, chemical, mining, power generation, water and wastewater treatment, military and marine, as well as commercial building and fire protection.

The Category Manager (CM) will lead negotiations and supplier management with the Victaulic supply base, driving the strategic sourcing process on a global basis. The CM will support the development, implementation and management of global strategies to provide the segment with optimal supply assurance, pricing, flexibility, quality and delivery performance. The CM benchmarks new processes, approaches and technology that will continually drive improvements on performance and business results.

The CM researches, identifies and analyzes current and emerging procurement trends, develops a deep understanding of market conditions, develops proposed global supply chain solutions focusing on total cost of ownership, presents solutions to gain leadership support, negotiates major and/or global agreements, builds and leverages strong working relationships with internal customers and key suppliers to assure cost, quality and delivery targets are met, and implements strategies, contracts and pricing across all regions.

Category Management:

• Address all areas of category management including category business plans, global market and pricing analysis, and procurement support.
• Contribute to development of the company's strategic category objectives and goals.
• Develop global category strategies with defined plans for cost savings, risk assessment and mitigation, and service level agreements.
• Lead in the development and execution of category negotiation strategies with suppliers, including specific targets for pricing, service, quality, intellectual property, tool ownership, exclusivity and inventory.
• Monitor current category market conditions, technology roadmaps and identify supply/demand challenges and opportunities.
• Develop subject matter expertise in assigned commodities through external research, benchmarking and analyzing cost drivers and life cycle costs, provide market intelligence and category price trends, and determine where competition sources components and materials.
• Act as the center of knowledge for respective category areas and share this information with key stakeholders to enable more effective planning, forecasting and execution.
• Develop and maintain should-cost models that are relevant to the global marketplace.

Sourcing Management:

• Utilize the strategic sourcing process to manage assigned commodities and finished products for multiple locations of Victaulic and subsidiaries, identify stakeholders, and form cross‑functional teams to define and implement strategy that reduces cost, improves quality and delivery performance.
• Provide rigorous analysis of spend data and market trends to prioritize and launch sourcing initiatives within designated spend/Category categories.
• Analyze current spend and evaluate current suppliers, consolidate spend across multiple manufacturing locations to create leverage, analyze purchasing trends and develop sourcing alternatives, and identify new high‑potential suppliers on a global basis.
• Deliver 5% year‑over‑year net cost reductions for commodities and programs within assigned responsibility.
• Manage respective supplier relationships and performance, including dispute resolution.

KPI’s Or Metrics:

• Develop key performance measures for chosen suppliers and negotiate on multiple variables to award longer‑term strategic contracts that result in significant cost reduction and improved service levels.

Project Management:

• Support new product introduction (NPI) programs as Program…