Category Manager - MRO & Capital Equipment

MRO & Capital Equipment Sourcing Manager

The MRO & Capital Equipment sourcing manager is responsible for leading all related procurement activities throughout the organization with the mission of supporting the company's productivity, lead time, and working capital business strategy. This person will manage the supply base and strategy that builds a sustainable competitive advantage.

The MRO & Capital Equipment sourcing manager serves as an authority on developing and leading procurement guidelines, policies & procedures, contracts, and negotiations. This person will manage a complex bid process for conformance with regulatory requirements, corporate policies, and procurement practice, ensuring fair and open competition that creates the appropriate benefit to the company. This role partners closely with a centralized engineering organization that owns technical specifications and standards. Further, this person directs the full range of actions required for the contract administration phase, post-award conferences with bidders, track productivity progress, track delivery progress, remedial action, and settle claims. The mission of this role is to convert capital procurement from a transactional activity into a strategic advantage that improves cost, reduces risk, and accelerates growth.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and execute category strategies for: Injection molds and tooling, Presses and auxiliary equipment and Automation and assembly systems.
• Build and actively manage a segmented supplier portfolio (strategic, competitive, niche)
• Introducing competitive alternatives to drive cost and innovation
• Lead all commercial negotiations for capital purchases: Pricing structures, payment milestones, warranty and service agreements, finally performance guarantees and penalties
• Develop should-cost models and benchmarking to ensure competitive pricing
• Structure contracts to protect the company from: Delivery delays, performance shortfalls and cost overruns
• Implement: Milestone-based payments tied to deliverables and clear acceptance criteria aligned with engineering
• Partner with Engineering, Operations, and Finance through the Stage Gate / CapEx process
• Category Manager owns commercial evaluation
• Ensure alignment between technical requirements and commercial outcomes
• Establish and manage supplier scorecards: Cost, delivery, quality and startup performance
• Lead supplier reviews and corrective actions for underperformance
• Drive continuous improvement across the supply base
• Support early project phases to enable faster project starts ("advantaging")
• Maintain pre-negotiated frameworks and supplier readiness
• Manage commercial aspects of change orders and claims.
• Strictly reviews scope creep with the executive staff and develops ways to prevent scope reep in the future.

Safety Responsibilities:

• Supports a culture where employees address unsafe conditions and behaviors, make suggestions for improvements, and actively participates in implementing solutions
• Identifies safety gaps and self-initiates corrective actions
• Strictly adheres to plant safety, housekeeping, and 5S efforts
• Understands, identifies, and corrects safety hazards
• Drives a culture which empowers employees to understand and embrace what they own

Food Safety Responsibilities:

• Monitors and verifies activities to ensure that finished goods and raw materials are coming in and out of the facility meet consumer safety and quality standards.
• Complies with all company food safety and quality assurance procedures
• Reports any product or process failures that could impact food safety of manufactured products to the location's Food Safety Team Leader and submits an appropriate incident report

Skills Required:

• Any combination of degreed education and experience providing the required skill and knowledge for successful performance would be qualifying.
• BA/BS in supply chain management, economics, finance, operations, engineering or business related filed preferred.
• At least 7+ years related work experience. Experience sourcing: Industrial equipment, tooling, or automation systems
• Must possess the ability to "sell" value and to run your category as a services business like any other well-run professional services operation.
• Experience in a fast moving, complex supply and trading environment.
• Must be a self-starter with a very strong cross functional team attitude by making strategic recommendations and taking appropriate action.
• Proven record of initiating and carrying out cost reduction / productivity improvement programs.
• Strong analytical skills
• Great attention to detail, and the ability to thrive in a team based culture.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communications, listening and presentation skills.
• Experience in dealing with suppliers and distributors.
• Strong negotiation skills.

This employee will be located in either Twinsburg, OH, Plattsburg, NY; or Somerset, NJ and report directly to the Vice President of Procurement.

Physical Requirements:

While performing the duties, the employee will be working in an office environment as well as on the manufacturing floor.

About MRP:

MRP Solutions (MRP), a plastic cap manufacturer, is a leading provider of high-quality, injection molded plastic closures, jars and packaging components used every day by millions of consumers around the globe. But we offer more than just plastic caps and lids we deliver industry-leading packaging solutions tailored to each customer's unique requirements, providing best-in-class product protection while ensuring consumer confidence.

MRP Solutions combines extensive packaging expertise with a consultative approach to reliably uncover customer needs. By understanding your business goals, we can tailor smarter, safer, and more flexible packaging solutions that reduce cost and increase speed to market, helping your businesses capitalize on opportunity. By constantly innovating, MRP enables our customers to grow, making us a preferred partner.

We are passionate about partnering with distributors and manufacturers who understand that plastic caps and lids are a small but important part of how people experience their brands. Together, we deliver packaging with purpose.

Our Vision:

We deliver industry-leading packaging solutions tailored to each customer's unique requirements, providing best-in-class product protection while ensuring consumer confidence.

By constantly innovating, MRP enables our customers to grow, making us a preferred partner.

Our Values & Beliefs:

• Integrity We have the courage to act with the highest level of integrity, even when no one is watching. We do what is right 100% of the time.
• Value Creation The sole reason a company exists is to create real long-term value for society. This starts with ensuring human safety, as value cannot be created without first protecting human life. We seek opportunities for mutual benefit with all of our stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, and the communities in which we operate. In everything we do, our overarching goal is to deliver superior results.
• Accountability - We are accountable to each other and to our stakeholders. We say what we do and do what we say. We embrace a culture of ownership, empowering and equipping employees with the ability to own their outcomes.
• Entrepreneurial - Everyone thinks and acts like owners, employing good economic and critical thinking skills while adopting the risk profile of our shareholders. We are inquisitive, constantly seeking out opportunities to improve, actively searching for and innovating across each and every aspect of our business. We relentlessly strive to understand and profitably anticipate what our customers need and value, because if our customers do not grow, we do not grow.
• Respectful and Friendly Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Because everyone's perspective has value, we embrace diversity of thought, background and experiences. We are friendly and lead with a smile. What we do is important, but how we do it is what makes it impactful.
• Change - We actively seek out and embrace change wherever profitable. Because society is constantly identifying and employing new and better ways of accomplishing tasks, we must constantly innovate, reinvent and, ultimately, destroy the old ways of doing business. We actively engage in rigorous debate and embrace challenge to ensure we stay relevant and deliver superior results.
• Fulfillment Our employees are the foundation of our success. We foster an environment enabling our employees to learn, grow and accept more accountability as they demonstrate capability. We promote more than just individual connection as community at work brings people together through common interest, objectives or experiences.

MRP Solutions is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate in recruiting, hiring or promotion based on race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, transgender status), national origin, age, disability, medical condition, marital or protected veteran status or any other basis or characteristic prohibited by applicable federal, state, or local law. Consistent