Position Summary
Reporting to the VP North American NCP Procurement, the Sr. Packaging Category Manager will oversee Packaging Categories across North America with a dotted line to the Global Packaging Lead. They will need to develop and execute the sourcing strategy to ensure the delivery of productivity initiative targets over a multi-year horizon working closely with stakeholders across the organization, manufacturing, research, and development (R&D), quality teams, and business unit (BU) leads to identify and deliver cost savings, improve supplier performance, and drive visibility to total cost of ownership.
The Category Manager will be responsible for monitoring supplier performance programs via quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with continuous improvement efforts to maximize value and deliver cost-saving initiatives while ensuring the highest levels of quality, efficiency, and sustainability.
Position Responsibilities
- Develop and implement the three-year North America strategic sourcing plan for Glass, Grinders, Plastic Bottles, and Plastic Caps, that aligns with company objectives and business needs (leverage seven step sourcing process).
- Lead the development, negotiation, and execution of key contracts with key suppliers to ensure quality, cost-effectiveness, and timely delivery of packaging materials and services.
- Monitor supplier performance against agreed key performance indicators (KPIs)/service-level agreements (SLAs) and take corrective action where necessary.
- Manage packaging category budget and ensure pricing variances are forecasted
- Build, project manage, and lead RFPs (Requests for Proposal) and develop "should-cost" analysis.
- Leverage market intelligence and pre-empt possible risks in the category.
- Project manage, build, identify and execute cost savings initiatives across the packaging category, tracking progress against budget and delivering regular reports to senior management.
- Manage source-to-pay (S2P) process, including supplier enablement, negotiations, and supplier relationship management (SRM).
- Maintain excellent working relationships with key suppliers and internal customers.
- Ensure compliance with all relevant regulations, standards, and ethical
- guidelines for packaging materials and processes.
- Strategically source category(s) including: RFx (request for x, identified criteria), evaluation criteria, supplier evaluations, supplier diversity evaluations, etc.
- Support ofi innovation launches through the commercialization process.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Position Requirements
- Bachelors' Degree is required, majors in Supply Chain Management, Economics, Business Administration, Packaging, or Packaging Engineering is preferred. Candidates may substitute three (3) years of prior Category Management experience or packaging or related field five (5) years' experience in Packaging (e.g., Procurement, Research & Development, Supply Chain).
- Five (5) years of strategic procurement with category management experience is required. Candidates substituting experience in lieu of degree to have Eight (8) years of experience with Category Management.
- Project Management and business acumen is required.
- Proven track record of strategic sourcing and delivering significant savings across a diverse range of procurement projects is required.
- Knowledge of category management or packaging (required)
- Strong business acumen with excellent understanding of markets and how they operate and will impact on the business is required.
- Experience with supply chain optimization and continuous improvements initiatives is strongly preferred required.
- Effective contract management and negotiation skills are required.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to communicate effectively at any level is required.
- Experience with MS Office applications including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Project Management is required.
- SAP Experience Preferred
- Ability and wiliness to travel approx. 25% is required
