Buyer

Buyer, Fresenius USA Manufacturing, Inc., a Fresenius Medical Care N.A. company, Irving, Texas

Responsible for obtaining materials using production and engineering schedules and established Standard Operating procedures (“SOPs”) to maintain inventory at planned levels to achieve production schedule and business goals. Will resolve internal, supplier, process, and system discrepancies to ensure production schedules and business goals are achieved.  Will facilitate and maintain bills of material and parts/commodities numbers in enterprise-wide systems and ensure that material standards are met and non-conformances or variances are approved and eliminated. Specific duties will include:

• Ensuring proper inventory levels of all materials, commodities, and services following established purchasing policies and procedures to optimize delivery and uptime.
• Establishing strong partnerships with strategic suppliers critical to business.
• Working with assigned suppliers to source, qualify, and rationalize new and existing products in accordance with established Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s).
• Investigating and identifying new qualified suppliers.
• Coordinating, conducting, and participating in meetings and discussions between suppliers and/or supplier representatives and necessary related personnel concerning supply, demand, delivery, or quality.
• Implementing purchase strategies and procurement programs to support production and business goals.
• Implementing sound, logical, and achievable purchase strategies and long-term procurement programs in support of initiatives.
• Developing sufficient number of suppliers to assure continuity of supply, effective competition, required quality and on-time deliveries.

This position will work at a large manufacturing facility in Irving, Texas and is responsible for obtaining raw materials used to create dialytic solutions (called Concentrates) used in the hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis process which are manufactured at the facility as well obtaining materials used in general maintenance at the facility. 

The Buyer ensures that the supply of raw materials meets the manufacturing requirements and also works to identify and obtain new and replacement suppliers as needed.  The position does not define or establish purchase strategies or procurement programs or goals.  Rather, the position performs the duties described in accordance with and to meet these strategies and business goals.  As an example, the Procurement Department developed a procurement program to use the SAP system to track purchases.  The Buyer had no role in that process but now uses SAP to perform this function with respect to the Concentrates raw materials.  In this regard, duties include: (i) on-boarding new suppliers including coordinating the collection of required tax documentation and entering supplier data into the Fresenius SAP system, (ii) monitoring inventory to ensure that the projected flow of raw materials meets manufacturing requirements and (iii) working with suppliers to resolve administrative problems including quality, delivery time and payment schedule.

The Buyer reports to a Procurement Manager and is one of a number of Buyers operating around the United States.  The position has no budgetary or supervisory responsibility and requires manager approval for all significant decisions.  As an example, Buyer may research and identify a new supplier for a raw material and work on proposals for costs and purchase terms.  But Buyer must then present this to the Procurement Manager who will make the decision as to whether to proceed or not. 

Requirements:

Position requires either a Bachelor’s degree (or an equivalent foreign degree) in Business, Supply Chain Management, Communications or a closely related field and 2 years of experience as a Buyer in an industrial setting or 4 years of experience as a Buyer in an industrial setting.  Must also have 2 years of experience (which can have been gained concurrently with either of the experience requirements above) working with the following:

• SAP or another ERP system including an MRP/demand planning system;
• Negotiating terms (pricing, terms, conditions and statements of work) with strategic suppliers;
• Analyzing procurement performance including freight cost, savings, price point variance and risk management;
• Monitoring and evaluating supplier performance;
• Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint;
• Production control and financial analysis including budgeting, forecasting and business modeling; and
• Execute and generate cost reduction improvements.