Job Description
Job Overview:
BiOrigin Specialty Products produces sustainable specialty paper and tissue products across five North American mills. We use a scientific, data-driven approach to deliver high-performance solutions, from antimicrobial coatings to water-based food service barriers. We are building a strategic sourcing organization to leverage our mill network, strengthen supplier partnerships, and create value for stakeholders.
Position: Mill MRO Buyer & Stores Manager
Reports to: Mill Manager; dotted-line support to Senior Manager, Capital and MRO
Location: BiOrigin Natural Dam Mill - Gouverneur, NY
This role is intended to strengthen mill-level purchasing discipline, improve storeroom performance, and ensure maintenance materials are available when needed to support safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations.
The Mill MRO Buyer & Stores Manager is responsible for tactical mill purchasing and storeroom management, ensuring that maintenance, repair, operating supplies, services, and critical materials are procured accurately, cost-effectively, and on time. This role manages requisitions and purchase orders, works with approved vendors, coordinates with maintenance, operations, engineering, EHS, and other mill stakeholders, and ensures materials are available for day-to-day operations, planned maintenance, mill outages, and the annual outage. As a key member of the Mill Management team, this role will participate in Mill leadership programs including safety, good manufacturing processes (GMP), safety programs, and on-call rotation.
In addition, this role is responsible for effective storeroom management, including item setup, item master accuracy, inventory controls, safety stock levels, inventory turns, obsolete and slow-moving inventory review, and continuous improvement of storeroom practices. The Mill MRO Buyer & Stores Manager partners with Corporate Sourcing and supports the Senior Manager, Capital and MRO by executing approved sourcing strategies, preferred vendor programs, supplier transitions, and procurement policies while meeting mill operating needs. This position also participates in the cross-functional mill buyers team to share best practices, benchmark KPIs, standardize purchasing processes, and support continuous improvement across the mill network.
Role and Responsibilities:
- Manage daily tactical purchasing activities for assigned mill MRO, services, supplies, and operating needs.
- Process requisitions and purchase orders accurately and timely in the ERP system.
- Submit orders with approved vendors and follow up to ensure timely delivery, order accuracy, and issue resolution.
- Partner with maintenance, operations, engineering, EHS, and other mill stakeholders to understand material requirements and ensure critical needs are procured in support of safe, reliable mill operations.
- Support and participate in emergency, outage, annual outage, and planned maintenance purchasing needs while balancing cost, lead time, quality, supplier reliability, and preferred vendor requirements.
- Coordinate outage material readiness by working with maintenance planning to kit parts and supplies for scheduled maintenance jobs, confirm required materials are staged in advance, and resolve shortages before work execution.
- Manage mill storeroom practices, including item setup, item master accuracy, min/max parameters, safety stock levels, inventory turns, cycle counts, and inventory accuracy.
- Coordinate with suppliers, service providers, and contractors to support material availability, service execution, and issue resolution for maintenance and outage work.
- Monitor stock-outs, excess inventory, obsolete materials, and slow-moving items; recommend corrective actions to improve working capital and material availability.
- Work closely with Corporate Sourcing to execute approved sourcing strategies, supplier transitions, contract rollouts, and preferred vendor programs.
- Ensure mill-level purchasing decisions are aligned with company sourcing strategies, procurement policies, internal controls, supplier agreements, and business priorities.
- Support supplier performance management by identifying service, quality, delivery, pricing, or responsiveness issues and escalating them to Corporate Sourcing as needed.
- Assist sourcing initiatives by providing local mill requirements, supplier feedback, usage data, demand patterns, and implementation support.
- Maintain accurate purchasing, supplier, item, and inventory data in ERP and storeroom systems.
- Participate in the cross-functional mill buyers team to share best practices, support standardization, benchmark performance, and improve procurement and storeroom KPIs across mills.
- Track and support improvement in key operational metrics such as purchase order cycle time, supplier delivery performance, inventory accuracy, stock-out frequency, inventory turns, safety stock compliance, and preferred vendor utilization.
- Support and identify continuous improvement projects related to purchasing efficiency, storeroom organization, supplier consolidation, inventory optimization, and cost reduction.
- Promote safe, ethical, compliant, and disciplined procurement and storeroom practices consistent with BiOrigin values and operating standards.
- Primary process owner of CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) and other miscellaneous systems as needed.
Desired skills and experience:
- Minimum of 3+ years of experience in site-level or mill purchasing, tactical buying, storeroom management, MRO procurement, maintenance materials management, or a related supply chain role.
- Experience in a manufacturing, paper, tissue, pulp, packaging, industrial, or process-industry environment preferred.
- Understanding of electrical and mechanical parts.
- Creative approaches to substitution of obsolete equipment.
- Strong understanding of requisition processing, purchase order management, vendor follow-up, material expediting, and procurement execution.
- Practical experience managing storeroom inventory, item setup, min/max levels, safety stock, cycle counting, obsolete inventory, and inventory turns.
- Working knowledge of ERP systems; JD Edwards experience is a plus.
- Working knowledge of CMMS; eMaint experience is a plus.
- Experience supporting planned maintenance outages, annual outages, or maintenance job kitting in a manufacturing or mill environment preferred.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively with maintenance, operations, engineering, suppliers, and corporate procurement.
- Ability to balance urgent mill needs with disciplined purchasing practices, preferred supplier strategies, cost control, and policy compliance.
- Strong organizational skills with attention to detail, follow-through, and accuracy in transactional purchasing and inventory data.
- Demonstrated problem-solving skills and ability to make sound decisions with incomplete or changing information.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Word, reporting tools, and standard business systems.
- Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Business, Operations, Engineering, or related field preferred.
- Supply chain or procurement certification such as APICS / ASCM, CPSM, or similar certification preferred.
