Category Manager

Location: Templecombe United Kingdom

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Procurement Category Manager Mechanical

Crawley / Templecombe

An exciting opportunity for a Procurement Category Manager has arisen within our Procurement Function. You will be responsible for the Procurement Category Racks Cabinets and Consoles across our UK Manufacturing business. The role will be to lead the UK Category activities supporting projects across Thales UK business lines. In this role the Category Manager will ensure that the execution of bid and project sourcing is in line with the business and corporate strategies and that time frames and deliverables are aligned in order to deliver the best overall outcome (cost service and/or quality) for Thales.

This position sits within the UK Category Management team which gives the individual an excellent view of the UK organisation as well as a strong ability to interact with senior global stakeholders.

We are looking for an individual who is knowledgeable in the mechanical supply chain can interact with Engineering/Design teams as well as having some experience of working with Indian suppliers.

The Category Manager is accountable for end-to-end performance of the acquisition process via the management of the RFI & RFPs you are also expected to lead major / business critical supplier selection exercises to support business needs and to ensure the deployment implementation and monitoring of agreed category strategies.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the supplier relationship management and when required support improvement drives on quality cost delivery contractual performance and innovation metrics; SPM/SDM resource will support this under the guidance of the Category Manager. You will be accountable for ensuring the most up-to-date knowledge of supplier markets is maintained including new innovations and key emerging technologies relevant to the category. An essential element of this role is to ensure that the suppliers provide the competitiveness required to support the business and to introduce optimal supply base changes to support business-winning capability.

Responsibilities

We are looking for the individual to help the global team define the long-term procurement strategy for UK Racks Cabinets and Consoles markets as well as leading the tendering process for bids and projects.

This will involve:

• Developing a category strategy that meets the regional and global business objectives;
• Actively sourcing assessing and qualifying potential suppliers;
• Understanding the demand for this type of activity across Thales;
• Executing the sourcing strategy through a disciplined RFI/ RFQ tendering process;
• Managing the RFQ process which includes creation of RFQ package release to market review supplier responses provide recommendations;
• Identifying risks and opportunities;
• Influencing the design and/ or specification to generate additional savings.

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