Associate Category Manager

Primary Function of Position

Manages supply chain of assigned direct materials suppliers and parts to support business continuity and optimization, including sourcing, supporting development of category strategy roadmaps, supporting contract negotiation, analyzing spend, creating inventory management strategies, gathering commodity intelligence, and managing supplier performance; may include limited management of purchase orders. May lead cross-functional category team. Identifies and may support implementation of key continuous improvement initiatives.

Essential Job Duties

Category Management

• Supports creation of long-term supplier strategies and roadmaps in collaboration with manager.
• Engages with internal stakeholders to learn about their needs and influence category strategy with manager to align with long-term business objectives.
• Co-leads direct procurement supplier selection process with collaboration from Supplier Engineering and oversight from manager.
• Uses strategic sourcing practices to identify a core supply base able to offer lowest total cost of ownership and high-quality product while identifying value improvement opportunities.
• Supports manager with alignment of production supplier requirements and sourcing strategies with those of new product development (NPI) for designated suppliers/categories to ensure uninterrupted material availability, alignment of risk, and cost goals with long term vision for the category / business.
• Ensures assigned category team goals and objectives are achieved.
• Engages with manager and cross-functional peers to understand and share market trends and commodity intelligence.
• Supports creation of content for category strategy reviews and may present some content at these meetings.

Supplier Performance Management

• Leads supplier scorecarding and supplier business reviews for assigned suppliers.
• Collaborates with supply base and procurement team to manage demand changes to minimize excess inventory or material shortages.
• Leads continuous improvement efforts needed with suppliers.

Risk and Capacity Management

• Proposes mitigation plans for assigned suppliers and critical sub-tier suppliers and supports implementation in collaboration with manager and cross-functional peers.
• Leads capacity assessments for assigned suppliers and critical sub-tier suppliers.
• May serve as project manager for key supplier capacity or risk mitigation initiatives.

Contract and Cost Management

• Under supervision of manager, utilizes established template agreements to install contracts with suppliers or amendments to existing agreements.
• Collaborates with manager to establish long-term volume pricing, risk mitigation, and capacity agreements with key suppliers to support Intuitive's volume growth.
• Reviews, administers, and manages long-term purchase order and delivery commitments to designated suppliers as necessary to support production and/or sales requirements within the business.
• Leads identification of cost reduction ideas to achieve year-over-year cost goals within assigned category(ies) and may support implementation of projects.

Operational Management

• Supports plant purchasing by leading negotiations with suppliers to adopt and implement lean sourcing principles to enable 100% material availability and optimization of on-hand inventory levels.
• Embraces continuous improvement techniques to drive toward attainment of key purchasing metrics (supplier on-time delivery, quality, risk management, inventory velocity, and cost reduction).
• May lead change management/change order implementation for complex projects.
• Supports master data integrity for suppliers and parts.
• May help train new colleagues within the supply chain organization.
• Identifies process and training improvement opportunities and may support closure of identified gaps.

Working Conditions

~25% travel to both domestic and international suppliers.