Buyer-TEMP

Position Summary:

We are seeking a driven and detail-oriented Buyer to support procurement, supply planning, and supplier management activities in a fast-paced environment. This temporary role is responsible for ensuring material availability, optimizing inventory levels, and driving supplier performance to meet delivery, quality, and cost objectives.

The Buyer will partner cross-functionally with operations, engineering, and quality teams while proactively managing purchase orders, monitoring key performance metrics, and identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.

This is a 6 month temporary contract and a hybrid role requiring onsite work three days per week in Cypress, CA (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday).

Responsibilities and Essential Functions:

• Procures supplies, materials, services, and equipment for delivery at specified time
• Places and updates purchase orders for current line of products and ensures timely delivery to eliminate backorders and out of stock items
• Plans, schedules, and monitors the movement of materials through the fulfillment cycle.
• Advises team of any actual or potential material shortages
• Ensures that suppliers have complete product information to meet product quality standards and deliveries for production
• Monitors performance of the buyer KPIs and recommends/executes improvement actions
• Tracks individual complete and on-time delivery (COT) performance, assigns reason codes for order fulfillment failures, recommends and drives actions to improve future performance for his/her commodities
• Tracks and reports suppliers’ service performance on supplier OTD, lead time, flexibility, capacity, safety stock, and shipping to complete and deliver quarterly supplier scorecards
• Monitors internal min/max levels and vendor safety stock to maximize inventory turns while ensuring material availability
• Tracks and resolves material review board (MRB) parts and resolves supplier non-conformances and cost recovery
• Conducts monthly supplier reviews of long-term component levels forecasts, capacity commitments, and mitigations to ensure demand-supply balance
• Responsible for reviewing and communicating the service section of the supplier scorecards
• Owns and manages procurement KPIs related to his or her assigned accounts/vendors
• Manages inventory planning and timing of engineering change orders (ECOs)
• Supports PPV and savings objectives by executing supplier and part transition tasks to achieve more favorable material costs
• Reviews and manage daily exceptions of master data, supply shortages, backorders, late shipments/receipts, and excess inventory for own parts

Qualifications, Skills and Education:

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, Supply Chain Management, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 3+ years of procurement experience
• Knowledge of materials requirement planning, inventory control techniques, forecasting, production planning, cost/price analysis, use of standard costs, production processes (internal and at the suppliers)
• Intermediate excel proficiency and basic analytical and problem solving skills
• Must be goal-oriented and metrics driven.
• Ability to manage and stay calm while being decisive under pressure
• Solid interpersonal and communication skills and professional demeanor
• Ability to work independently and handle multiple tasks..
• Strong organizational and prioritizing skills.
• Strong planning and analysis skills coupled with results orientation.
• Desire to implement change and possess a passion for excellence.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Masters Degree preferred.
• CPM, CPSM, APICS certifications preferred.
• Experience in procuring/planning in office furniture industry or at Exemplis
• Experience with supplier kanban, supplier safety stock programs, lead time reductions and vendor owned inventory (VOI) or vendor managed inventory (VMI) processes 
• Experience in managing a global supply chain, preferably involving Asia and/or Mexico, and incorporating just in time (JIT) principles for planning and manufacturing
• Mandarin or Spanish language skills a plus.