Purchasing Director Full Time

About The Position

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Business, Management, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 10+ years in supply chain roles, including at least 2 years in a purchasing leadership role with direct reports.
• ERP experience required.
• Demonstrated understanding of inventory management systems.
• Advanced Excel skills required, including VLOOKUPs, pivot tables, and formulas.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong customer service and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to address conflict and have difficult conversations.
• Ability to lead and manage people, hold others accountable, and drive a performance-based team.
• 0-10%; minimal travel required, primarily for training or as needed.

Responsibilities

• Create, review and manage product categories, core stocking rules, branch guidelines, min/max logic, safety stock levels.
• Support dead inventory reduction through reporting and cross-functional collaboration, including offboarding strategies such as returns to vendors, promotions, transfers or liquidation.
• Work with sales to support demand planning by reviewing critical SKUs for price increases, new products, projects, weather spikes, promotions, retiring products, etc.
• Create Vendor Scorecards to assess profitability, supply reliability, inventory health, and competitive advantage.
• Support supplier negotiations through reporting and pricing data.
• Optimize freight programs through consolidated ordering, managing prepaid freight thresholds, shipment timing, transfer efficiency, and vendor freight agreements.
• Manage lead times and track vendor on-time delivery performance.
• Hold vendors accountable for on-time delivery, request credits, and escalate shortages or expedited delivery needs.
• Define and manage demand planning at Republic. Work cross-functionally with the Sales team to understand rolling forecasts and use historical sales, seasonality, market trends, promotions and project activity to build a strong demand plan.
• Anticipate supply chain interruptions and evaluate lead times effectively during demand planning.
• This position is a champion of ERP purchasing processes and logic, workflows, and approval processes for all transactions in purchasing (POs, Receipt of Inventory, Transfers, etc).
• Provide automated support to assist in replenishment decisions, including min/max levels, reorder points, safety stock, and transfer logic.
• Maintain item data integrity. Ensure vendor records, item records, product categories, and reporting remain accurate and up to date.
• Oversee vendor management, ensuring vendors are appropriately assigned to buyers and branches with clear rationale.
• Partner with ERP systems experts to develop role-based approval structures that define authority levels.
• Work with senior leaders to establish a new product/line introduction process.
• Automate system functionality and reporting wherever possible, particularly related to POs not received, acknowledgments, and exceptions.
• Recruit, train and mentor buyers and/or other department positions.
• Work closely with Pricing department to ensure strategic initiatives are achieved.
• Hold team members accountable to new processes, develop SOPs for the department, and establish performance expectations.
• Lead and/or participate in cross-functional processes across the organization.
• Partner with Sales on demand forecasting.
• Work with Branch Managers and the VP of Operations to solve inventory issues, as well as train, educate and empower them on issues they should and should not resolve.
• Collaborate with Accounting and Finance to maintain inventory metrics and capital allocations within budget.
• And other duties as assigned.