Pay Range:

Position Summary

The Planning & Purchasing Manager is responsible for managing purchasing, replenishment planning support, supplier relationship management, and material availability activities for the Denver site. This role supports customer fulfillment, production readiness, inventory health, and backlog reduction in a life sciences environment.

A key focus of this role is actively managing and strengthening supplier relationships to improve on time delivery, lead time reliability, responsiveness, and overall supply performance. Success in this role requires strong purchasing discipline, proactive supplier management, accurate ERP data, inventory awareness, and a structured operating cadence that identifies risks early, drives timely action, improves material availability, reduces supply related backlog risk, and supports reliable customer fulfillment.

Denver operates a buy, relabel, and resell business model with a focused group of critical stocked products and a large number of lower volume SKUs. This role partners closely with Customer Service, Warehouse, Operations, Finance, and Suppliers to ensure reliable execution and continuous improvement across the supply chain. The position is expected to strengthen supplier performance, improve purchasing execution, enhance inventory performance, and create clear visibility to supply risks while driving accountability across the supply chain.

This role reports to the Senior Manager, Denver Operations and Supply Chain.

Core Accountabilities

Planning, Purchasing & Supplier Management

• Manage daily purchasing activities, ensuring purchase orders are placed, maintained, and executed accurately.

• Build and maintain strong supplier relationships to improve delivery performance, lead time reliability, responsiveness, and overall execution.

• Serve as the key owner for supplier relationship management and supplier follow up for assigned suppliers, with a focus on improving supplier on time delivery and supply reliability.

• Manage open purchase orders, supplier commitments, delivery schedules, and supply risks to support material availability and customer fulfillment.

• Monitor supplier performance, identify recurring issues, and work collaboratively with suppliers to drive corrective actions and service improvements.

• Lead regular supplier reviews, escalation discussions, and recovery planning for suppliers with recurring delivery or responsiveness issues.

• Maintain purchasing parameters, lead times, safety stock inputs, and other ERP planning data to support replenishment accuracy.

• Partner with Planning to translate demand requirements and backlog priorities into effective purchasing and replenishment actions.

• Drive improvements in supplier on time delivery and purchasing execution to reduce material shortages, late deliveries, and supply related backlog risks.

Inventory, Service & Operational Execution

• Support inventory health through effective replenishment, purchasing discipline, and proactive risk management.

• Monitor inventory levels, stockout risks, excess inventory, and material constraints, taking action to minimize service disruptions.

• Partner with Customer Service, Warehouse, and Operations to resolve supply issues, order delays, and material shortages.

• Provide visibility to supply risks, material availability, and recovery plans through daily and weekly operating reviews.

• Support month end and quarter end execution by identifying and mitigating material related risks.

• Help improve inventory performance and material availability while supporting reliable customer fulfillment and operational readiness.

Metrics, Systems & Continuous Improvement

• Maintain accurate purchasing, supplier, and inventory data within Microsoft Dynamics AX or other ERP systems.

• Track and report key metrics including supplier on time delivery, open purchase orders, lead time adherence, inventory availability, and supply risks.

• Partner with the enterprise data analytics team to support reporting through Excel, Power BI, Smartsheet, or similar platforms, improving visibility to supplier, purchasing, inventory, and supply risk metrics.

• Identify process gaps, data issues, and operational bottlenecks, and lead targeted continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen purchasing, planning, and inventory performance.

• Establish and maintain standard work for purchasing, supplier management, reporting, and escalation processes.

• Improve ERP data accuracy and reporting visibility to support better decision making, accountability, and proactive risk management.

Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Manage, coach, and develop purchasing team members in daily execution, prioritization, and issue resolution.

• Provide coaching and guidance to strengthen purchasing, planning, ERP, and supplier management capabilities.

• Set clear expectations for team performance, supplier follow up, purchasing discipline, escalation, and follow through.

• Collaborate effectively with Planning, Customer Service, Warehouse, Operations, Finance, and suppliers to achieve site objectives.

• Promote a culture of accountability, urgency, teamwork, and continuous improvement.

• Help establish a disciplined operating rhythm that provides clear visibility to supply risks, drives ownership of actions, and supports consistent execution across functions.

Education & Experience

• Bachelors degree in Supply Chain, Business, Operations, or a related field preferred.

• 5+ years of experience in purchasing, procurement, planning, inventory management, supply chain operations, supplier management, or materials management.

• 5+ years of demonstrated experience managing supplier relationships, improving supplier delivery performance, and driving supplier accountability preferred.

• 3+ years of leadership experience managing, supervising, or leading buyers, planners, purchasing teams, or supply chain personnel preferred.

• Demonstrated success managing supplier relationships and improving delivery performance, responsiveness, and supply reliability.

• Experience managing or leading buyers, planners, purchasing teams, or supply chain personnel preferred.

• Experience with ERP systems required; Microsoft Dynamics AX experience preferred.

• Strong analytical, problem solving, organizational, and communication skills.

• Advanced Excel skills required; Power BI, Smartsheet, or similar reporting tools preferred.

• Lean, continuous improvement, distribution, life sciences, or regulated industry experience preferred.