Indirect Procurement-Senior Manager

Founded over 35 years ago, First Quality is a family-owned company that has grown from a small business in McElhattan, Pennsylvania into a group of companies, employing over 5,000 team members, while maintaining our family values and entrepreneurial spirit. With corporate offices in New York and Pennsylvania and 8 manufacturing campuses across the U.S. and Canada, the companies within the First Quality group produce high-quality personal care and household products for large retailers and healthcare organizations. Our personal care and household product portfolio includes baby diapers, wipes, feminine pads, paper towels, bath tissue, adult incontinence products, laundry detergents, fabric finishers, and dishwash solutions. In addition, we manufacture certain raw materials and components used in the manufacturing of these products, including flexible print and packaging solutions.

Guided by our values of humility, unity, and integrity, we leverage advanced technology and innovation to drive growth and create new opportunities. At First Quality, you’ll find a collaborative environment focused on continuous learning, professional development, and our mission to Make Things Better®.

We are seeking a Indirect Procurement-Sr. Manager for our First Quality Products Company located in McElhattan, PA. This position may be based out of our Central PA site (McElhattan, PA & Lewistown, PA) or  Macon, GA. This position will be responsible for leading the indirect procurement department covering all FQ Absorbent Hygiene companies (AbHy). The individual in this role will manage strategic sourcing initiatives, approve spend in certain categories, work closely with other functional department team members to standardize and streamline spend, lead negotiations with vendors, and collaborate across AbHy plants to ensure consistency of processes and purchases to leverage spend and deliver the best overall value for FQ. Must have the ability to travel roughly 30% of time to AbHy locations.

Primary responsibilities include:

• Direct/coordinate the procurement of indirect materials, supplies, spare parts, and services (MRO) needed to support operations for all AbHy plants by promoting collaboration across AbHy indirect buyers and functional departments to find synergies and negotiate aggregated volumes to achieve commercial benefits

• Represent FQ by developing strategic relationships with key suppliers.  This includes sourcing and negotiating strategies along with leading the internal process and obtaining alignment with cross functional stakeholders

• Design and implement policies and procedures for the indirect procurement department that are consistent with the overall FQ purchasing policies.

• Identify and track cost savings initiatives including dollar savings and process improvements within the indirect procurement department and with functional departments to support FQ’s Funding the Growth (FTG) efforts

• Lead and manage a team of indirect buyers across multiple locations, providing training, supervision, direction, and guidance.

• Establish and maintain measurable performance metrics covering procurement activities including but not limited to buyer activity levels, categorized spend, requisition activity, and internal order placement performance.

• Approve requisitions across multiple plants in specific categories of spend to ensure the requisitioned item or service is accurate in need and scope, interface heavily with the requisitioning department to resolve questions and thoroughly vet the spend, and provide analytics to support the spend with documented notes and summaries to leadership, and. 

• Participate in the development of cost-effective parts, equipment, and substitute equipment while maintaining quality and safety.

• Build and maintain strong relationships within the procurement department and other functional departments, finance, and plant leadership to ensure alignment of goals and objectives and cost savings initiatives.

• Research and identify vendors of spare parts, supplies, services, and other goods to assess for potential inclusion in competitive bidding to continually strengthen the FQ vendor selection options.

• Create or assist in creating procurement documentation such as requisition summaries to support spend, executive summaries, RFI’s, RFP’s and RFQ’s, and other spend and sourcing analytical reports.

• Build and develop our digital roadmap to drive automation, efficiency, insights, and cost effectiveness

• Additional duties as assigned.

The ideal candidate should possess the following:

• Bachelor’s degree in business management / supply chain or a minimum of 5 years’ experience in manufacturing operations, with negotiating, cost analysis, and supply chain or procurement experience preferred.

• Strong and effective communicator, both oral and written, who can articulate and clearly convey information with good interpersonal and leadership skills while interfacing with all levels of FQ’s organization structure.

• Experience in supervising and leading a team of employees is ideal.

• Demonstrated experience with business relationship development and excellent customer service.

• Proven analytical, problem-solving and process optimization abilities while working in a fast-paced environment.

What We Offer You

We believe that by continuously improving the quality of our benefits, we can help to raise the quality of life for our team members and their families. At First Quality you will receive:

• Competitive base salary and bonus opportunities

• Paid time off (three-week minimum)

• Medical, dental and vision starting day one

• 401(k) with employer match

• Paid parental leave

• Child and family care assistance (dependent care FSA with employer match up to $2500)

• Bundle of joy benefit (year's worth of free diapers to all team members with a new baby)

• Tuition assistance

• Wellness program with savings of up to $4,000 per year on insurance premiums

•   ...and more!