The Materials Manager is the on-site supply chain leader for the power distribution assembly operation, responsible for ensuring that the right materials are available at the right time to support every active project — from configure-to-order quick-ship programs through complex, long-horizon engineered-to-order builds. This is a hands-on leadership role with direct supervisory responsibility for the Buyer Planner team and a mandate to operate at both the tactical and strategic levels of supply chain management simultaneously.
At the tactical level, the Materials Manager owns the day-to-day performance of material availability, inventory health, and supplier delivery compliance across the facility. At the strategic level, the Materials Manager partners with the Director of Supply Chain to position strategic materials, develop supply chain resilience for critical commodities, and drive inventory investment decisions that balance working capital efficiency against production continuity.
The Materials Manager is the critical integration point between supply chain and operations — working daily with Project Managers to align material plans to project schedules, engaging Sales early on new opportunities to provide realistic lead time input and collaborating with Production to ensure the shop floor never stops for a preventable material shortage. This role requires both the technical depth to understand MRP/ERP-driven planning and the leadership credibility to hold a team and a supplier base accountable to high performance standards.
The Materials Manager operates at the center of a cross-functional network. Key relationships and the nature of each interface are defined below:
Director of Supply Chain - Dotted-line strategic alignment — category strategy, supplier positioning, make/buy decisions, and capital inventory investment
Buyer Planners (direct) - Day-to-day supervision of purchasing and planning execution; performance management; workload balancing across project portfolio
Project Managers (peer) - Collaboration to ensure material plans align to project schedules; joint escalation on supply risk and delivery risk
Sales (peer) - Early engagement on new opportunities; material lead time input for order acknowledgement; demand visibilityc
Production / Operations - Material availability to support assembly schedules; shortage resolution; dock-to-floor coordination
Quality Engineering (peer) - Supplier qualification, NCM disposition, SCAR process, and incoming inspection coordination
1. Buyer Planner Team Leadership & Development
Directly supervise, coach, and develop the Buyer Planner team; set clear performance expectations, conduct regular 1:1s, and deliver structured performance reviews against defined KPIs.
Assign and balance workload across Buyer Planners by commodity, project type, and volume; adjust portfolio assignments as business needs and team capability evolve.
Ensure Buyer Planners are operating as disciplined ERP/MRP power users — executing all procurement and planning actions through the system, maintaining item master data accuracy, and acting on exception messages with urgency and precision.
Monitor Buyer Planner performance against the 10 inventory turns per year target at the individual portfolio level and in aggregate; coach underperforming planners and escalate persistent gaps to operations leadership.
Develop team capability through structured mentoring, cross-training, and exposure to supplier negotiations, commodity strategy, and project-level material planning.
Identify and close skills gaps within the team; support training and certification pursuits (APICS CPIM, CSCP) as part of individual development plans.
Maintain coverage plans for team absences; ensure no project or supplier relationship goes unmanaged during vacations, leaves, or turnover.
2. Project-Aligned Material Planning & PM Collaboration
Collaborate daily with Project Managers — both Senior and Junior — to ensure material availability plans are aligned to active project schedules, acknowledged ship dates, and production release timelines.
Participate in project kick-off meetings for all new ETO orders to review BOM, identify long-lead items, assess supply risk, and establish material availability commitments that support the project schedule.
Provide material availability assessments and long-lead item status to the Senior Project Manager as input to the order acknowledgement lead time determination — ensuring no ship date is committed without a validated supply chain view.
Own the material shortage escalation process: when a Buyer Planner identifies a shortage or supply risk that threatens a project schedule, the Materials Manager leads the cross-functional response — engaging suppliers, evaluating alternatives, and communicating risk to the PM and operations leadership.
Review the active project portfolio weekly with the Project Management team; align material critical path with project critical path and identify any supply chain actions required to protect customer delivery commitments.
Ensure the Junior PM's quick-ship and CTO order portfolio is continuously supported by appropriate finished goods levels, pre-positioned materials, and responsive Buyer Planner attention.
3. Sales Collaboration & Demand Visibility
Engage with Sales at the opportunity stage for complex or large orders — before a quote is issued — to provide supply chain input on long-lead material availability, supplier capacity constraints, and realistic lead time expectations.
Participate in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) meetings; provide supply chain perspective on demand forecasts, backlog trends, and capacity constraints that affect material positioning decisions.
Maintain a forward-looking demand signal from the sales pipeline; use this visibility to pre-position strategic materials, initiate early supplier engagement, and reduce lead time risk on anticipated orders.
Support the sales team's customer commitments by providing clear, accurate, and timely supply chain data — and by pushing back transparently when proposed ship dates are not achievable given current supply conditions.
Collaborate with Sales on customer-specific stocking programs, blanket order agreements, and consignment inventory arrangements that improve service levels and reduce order-to-ship cycle time.
4. Strategic Material Positioning — Director of Supply Chain Alignment
Partner with the Director of Supply Chain to identify, classify, and develop strategic positioning plans for critical materials — components with long lead times, single-source risk, high price volatility, or outsized impact on production continuity.
Maintain and execute a strategic inventory investment plan for long-lead electromechanical components (specialty breakers, bus assemblies, power electronic modules, custom enclosures, transformers) aligned to the forward demand plan and approved by the Director of Supply Chain.
Identify single-source and sole-source dependencies within the Buyer Planner portfolios; develop and present risk mitigation options (dual sourcing, safety stock, supplier-managed inventory, LTAs) to the Director of Supply Chain for decision.
Support commodity strategy development led by the Director of Supply Chain and Commodity Managers; provide facility-level consumption data, supplier performance history, and demand forecasts to inform category-level decisions.
Execute approved commodity strategies at the facility level: implement preferred supplier agreements, enforce pricing frameworks, drive contract compliance, and report performance against strategy targets.
Manage the facility-level make/buy analysis process for components where internal fabrication may be an alternative to purchased supply; present findings and recommendations to the Director of Supply Chain and operations leadership.
Anticipate and proactively communicate market conditions — commodity price trends, supply constraints, geopolitical risks, tariff impacts — that could affect the facility's material cost or availability, with recommended mitigations.
5. Inventory Health & Working Capital Management
Own the facility's inventory performance in aggregate: monitor inventory turns, excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory levels, days of supply, and working capital tied up in raw material and WIP across all Buyer Planner portfolios.
Drive the team toward the 10 inventory turns per year target at the facility level; identify systemic barriers to inventory velocity and lead corrective initiatives.
Chair the monthly E&O review: classify excess and obsolete inventory by root cause, assign disposition actions (return to supplier, redeployment to other projects, write-off recommendation), and track to closure.
Establish and maintain inventory policy for the facility: safety stock methodology, reorder point logic, lot sizing rules, and cycle count program — ensuring policies are consistently applied and ERP parameters reflect current reality.
Lead the annual physical inventory process; develop the count plan, assign team responsibilities, reconcile results, and present findings to operations and finance leadership.
Balance the competing demands of inventory turns, material availability, and working capital investment; make and defend inventory investment decisions with data, not instinct.
6. Supplier Performance Management
Own the facility's supplier performance management program: track, report, and act on on-time delivery (SOTD), quality (PPM), lead time accuracy, and responsiveness metrics across the active supplier base.
Conduct structured quarterly business reviews with key suppliers; bring performance data, identify improvement areas, and establish written action plans with measurable commitments.
Manage supplier escalations that exceed the Buyer Planner's authority: engage supplier leadership, demand corrective action, and escalate to the Director of Supply Chain when supplier performance threatens production continuity.
Collaborate with Quality Engineering on supplier corrective action requests (SCARs); ensure root cause analysis is complete, corrective actions are implemented, and supplier return-to-green timelines are tracked.
Support the supplier qualification process for new suppliers identified through commodity strategy development or sole-source risk mitigation efforts; coordinate with Quality Engineering and Application Engineering on technical qualification requirements.
Negotiate or oversee the negotiation of pricing agreements, blanket purchase orders, and long-term agreements (LTAs) with strategic suppliers; ensure agreements are documented, compliant, and maintained in the ERP system.
7. ERP / MRP Governance & Data Integrity
Serve as the supply chain owner of ERP data integrity for the facility: ensure item master accuracy, BOM alignment, supplier lead times, and planning parameters reflect current reality at all times.
Establish and enforce ERP usage standards for the Buyer Planner team; all procurement and planning actions must be system-driven — off-system workarounds are identified and eliminated.
Review MRP output at the portfolio level on a regular cadence; identify systemic planning issues (parameter drift, demand signal distortion, BOM errors) and drive root cause resolution.
Partner with IT and the ERP system administrator on supply chain module improvements, report development, and system configuration changes that improve planning effectiveness.
Champion data accuracy as a cultural standard within the team: if the data is wrong, the decisions are wrong.
8. Reporting, Metrics & Continuous Improvement
Prepare and present a weekly supply chain performance dashboard to operations leadership covering material availability to schedule, shortage status, supplier SOTD, inventory turns, and E&O exposure.
Present a monthly supply chain scorecard to the VP of Operations and Director of Supply Chain covering all KPIs with trend analysis, root cause commentary, and forward-looking risk assessments.
Lead or sponsor continuous improvement initiatives within the materials function: ERP parameter optimization, supplier lead time reduction, dock-to-stock cycle time improvement, and inventory footprint reduction.
Drive lean supply chain principles within the facility: eliminate waste in receiving, inspection, storage, and kitting processes; apply 5S to the warehouse and stockroom; reduce material handling steps between receipt and point of use.
Benchmark facility supplies chain performance against industry standards; identify capability gaps and present improvement roadmaps to leadership.
The Materials Manager will be measured against the following metrics, reported monthly to the VP of Operations and Director of Supply Chain:
Inventory Turns - 10 turns/year across Buyer Planner portfolios (aggregate)
Material On-Time Availability - 98% of project material available by required-on-floor date
Supplier On-Time Delivery (SOTD) - 95% of PO line items delivered on or before PO promise date
Purchase Price Variance (PPV) - Favorable or neutral vs. standard cost; negative PPV trend escalated
Excess & Obsolete Inventory (E&O) - E&O value reduced quarter-over-quarter; no unreviewed E&O > 90 days
Shortage Frequency - Zero production line stops attributable to preventable material shortages
Supplier Quality (PPM) - Incoming defect rate trending downward; SCAR closure within 30 days
Strategic Material Positioning - Critical long-lead items stocked to agreed safety levels 100% of the time
Materials Manager