Planner / Buyer

Planner / Buyer The Fiber group in Coherent’s East Granby, CT facility has an immediate need for a Buyer/Planner (Supply Chain Professional). The successful candidate will support manufacturing operations in our growing and expanding product line of Optical Fibers. This is a fast-paced, highly technical and continually evolving manufacturing business with significant growth potential. **Primary Duties & Responsibilities** - **Buyer/Purchasing:** - Manage processes related to the purchase of equipment, supplies, raw materials, and services for assigned suppliers, categories and manufacturing site. - Participate in developing and monitoring performance against the annual operating budget. - Proactively manage vendors to address on-time delivery, expedite/de-expedite deliveries as necessary - Coordinate formal and informal bids, request for quote/qualification (RFQ’S), Request for proposals (RFP’S); ensures all applicable legal and contractual provisions are met; manage and participate in solicitation, evaluation and award of bids; perform or assist others in the performance of price/cost analysis; negotiate contract provisions; prepare specifications as required. - Leader in cost reduction activity and report them to the supply chain manager on a consistent basis. - Maintains the MRP system’s integrity, monitoring indicators, reporting on and ensuring the smooth flow of purchasing transactions (from PO entry, expediting, tracking multi-party component assemblies, assist in part number creation, etc.) - Create consigned vendor managed inventory (CVMI) or vendor managed inventory (VMI) agreements and maintain proper inventory levels to the benefit of the operation’s performance. - Determine appropriate contracts for various types of procurement needs; review requisitions/purchase orders and related documents for completeness, accuracy and compliance with department and company procedures and requirements; review invoices and other documentation for accuracy and compliance; resolve disputed invoices. - Have an in-depth understanding of commodities purchased and industry leaders that provide said commodities. Interface with internal customers, work with peer groups and support the purchasing team. - Participate and or lead cross functional teams to meet department goals and objectives. Must be the commercial expert in all team activities. - **Production Planning:** - Responsible for generating and releasing work orders and maintaining production schedules in the MRP system - Support production planning activities including schedule updates, tracking WIP progress throughout production, material tracking, and inventory monitoring - Review and maintain BOM accuracy and support implementation of engineering changes (ECOs) - Monitor production status, material availability, and assist in resolving shortages - Generate and maintain planning, inventory, and production reports - Coordinate with manufacturing, engineering, purchasing, and customer service to support production flow - Monitor manufacturing yields, Lead Time, Safety stock, Shrink %, and Work Order Variance - Review production status and capacity issues with manufacturing supervisor - Update on time deliveries, misses, reasons **Education & Experience** - Typically requires a minimum of 7 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 5 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years experience; or equivalent experience. **Skills** - Working understanding of MRP systems, bill of materials (BOM), Accounting, production control, receiving and inventory along with some database management skills will support the requirements of this job. - Understand Purchasing’s role in the ERP/MRP (Oracle preferred) environment along with ability to interface with manufacturing data base systems (Agile) - Strong customer service skills are required to be able to interface with internal customers as well as outside suppliers. Must be able to effectively communicate between operation…