Maintenance Purchaser

Job Description

Job Description

About the Company

Cérélia operates a state‑of‑the‑art commercial bakery and production facility in Whitehall, Ohio, a 160,000‑square‑foot plant that opened in September 2021 and serves as the U.S. manufacturing hub for the Jus‑Rol brand. Our Whitehall facility specializes in ready‑to‑bake chilled dough products—including pizza dough, pie crusts, puff pastry, and gluten free cookie dough—and continues to expand with new product lines to support national growth.

Team members enjoy modern onsite amenities such as a fitness center and EV charging stations, all within a clean, innovative, and fast‑growing environment. While our Whitehall plant is new, Cérélia’s roots trace back to 1974, evolving from a France‑based bakery into an international leader in dough innovation. As we grow, our people grow with us—if you’re passionate about doing meaningful work with a company on the rise, we’d love to hear from you.

Position Summary

The Maintenance Purchaser is responsible for purchasing maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) materials, spare parts, services, tools, and equipment required to support safe and reliable plant operations. This position works closely with Maintenance, Operations, Engineering, Finance, and approved suppliers to ensure required materials are available when needed while maintaining appropriate inventory levels and controlling costs.
The Maintenance Purchaser will support a food-manufacturing environment where equipment reliability, food safety, employee safety, and production up time are critical.

Primary Responsibilities

This list is not all inclusive, other duties assigned as necessary by management.

Purchasing & Procurement

• Purchase MRO parts, supplies, tools, equipment, and contracted services.
• Process purchase requisitions and purchase orders in accordance with company procedures.
• Obtain and compare supplier quotations.
• Negotiate pricing, lead times, freight, payment terms, and other purchasing conditions.
• Identify opportunities for cost savings and standardization.
• Expedite critical parts and materials required to prevent or minimize production downtime.
• Monitor open purchase orders and communicate expected delivery dates to Maintenance personnel.
• Develop and maintain relationships with approved vendors and suppliers.
• Identify alternate suppliers when parts are obsolete, unavailable, or experiencing extended lead times.

Maintenance Support

• Work closely with Maintenance Supervisors, Technicians, CI, and Reliability personnel to understand material requirements.
• Support planned maintenance, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, and major shutdown activities.
• Purchase parts based on equipment specifications, manufacturer part numbers, and approved alternatives.
• Research replacement parts and identify equivalent or improved components when appropriate.
• Assist technicians and planners in locating hard-to-find or obsolete parts.
• Support emergency purchasing during equipment breakdowns and production interruptions.
• Maintain awareness of critical spare parts and long-lead-time components.

Inventory Coordination

• Coordinate with the Maintenance Manager to maintain appropriate MRO inventory levels.
• Monitor stock levels, reorder points, minimum/maximum quantities, and critical spares.
• Help identify obsolete, excess, and slow-moving inventory.
• Assist with cycle-count discrepancies and inventory accuracy.
• Ensure purchased materials are properly identified and matched to purchase orders.
• Support efforts to standardize commonly used parts across equipment and production lines.

Vendor Management

• Maintain an approved supplier base for maintenance materials and services.
• Evaluate vendor performance related to quality, pricing, delivery, responsiveness, and service.
• Obtain updated pricing and negotiate annual or volume agreements where appropriate.
• Coordinate vendor visits and service requirements with Maintenance management.
• Resolve purchasing, delivery, pricing, and invoice discrepancies.

Financial & Administrative

• Maintain accurate purchase orders and purchasing records.
• Ensure purchases are made within approved budgets and authorization limits.
• Work with Accounts Payable to resolve invoice discrepancies.
• Track maintenance purchasing expenditures and identify significant cost trends.
• Provide purchasing reports and metrics as requested.

Food Manufacturing & Safety Responsibilities

• Follow all plant safety policies and procedures.
• Follow applicable OSHA, GMP, food-safety, and company requirements.
• Understand the importance of using food-grade materials, lubricants, chemicals, and components where required.
• Ensure purchased materials meet applicable equipment, sanitation, food-contact, and safety requirements.
• Do not substitute parts or materials that could negatively affect employee safety, food safety, equipment reliability, or regulatory compliance without appropriate approval.
• Support Management of Change (MOC) requirements when purchasing substitutions or equipment modifications that could affect safety, quality, or process performance.

Requirements

Education and/ or Experience:

• H.S. diploma required.
• 1-2 years industrial MRO purchasing or similar administrative duties required. Food industry is a plus
• Ability to learn maintenance systems, in this environment MaintainX and JF would be used daily.
• Be preferred to understand food safety practices in a manufacturing environment preferred.

Communication and Analytical Skills:
 

• Effective communication and listening skills
• Strong problem decision-making skills

• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills to identify issues, trends and drive solutions.

Other Skills and Abilities:

• Proficient in computer skills (Microsoft excel, word, outlook and CMMS systems)
• Strong interpersonal skills, demonstrating dignity, respect, candor and commitment.
• Strong ownership and team building skills.
• Demonstrated experience in handling multiple tasks and meeting deadlines in a manufacturing environment.

Core Competencies

• Drive High Performance : Establish clear accountability for outcomes. Stays focused and discipline in planning and execution. Takes initiatives to overcome challenges. Celebrates wins and acts with urgency to keep momentum.
• Collaborate : Works as One Team. Builds relationships and makes commitments to others and follows through. An active listener who understands and communicates openly while engaging in healthy debate. Supports and execute decisions when they are made.
• Innovate : challenge the status quo by pro-actively identify opportunities to make things better. Encourages team to share best practices, be creative and try new things. Experiments, incorporates learning and adjusts as needed. Acts with speed and agility while accepting and learning from failure.
• Can-do attitude : has a pragmatic view on reality while understanding the challenges and perspectives across the organization. Pro-actively and easily connects with the customers, factories and the different stakeholders. Acts like an owner by providing ready-to-go solutions.
• Accuracy and attention to detail: ability to digest high amounts of information to transform into actionable insights to drive business development, with a mindset of value generation

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