MGP Ingredients is a leading supplier of premium distilled spirits and food ingredient solutions. Its Distilling Solutions segment provides bourbons, whiskeys, ryes, gins, and vodkas to craft and multinational brands. MGP's own Branded Spirts business is growing following the 2021 acquisition of Luxco, a top spirits producer, bottler, supplier, and importer as well as the 2023 acquisition of Penelope Bourbon, known for its wide range of uniquely blended expressions. Ingredient Solutions delivers nutritional, functional wheat- and pea-based ingredients aligned with consumer trends. The company operates in locations across the Midwestern U.S., and overseas in Northern Ireland and Mexico.

THE OPPORTUNITY:

Leads the assigned business unit’s maintenance, repair, and operations purchasing, inventory, and storeroom functions to ensure critical materials and services are available when needed to support safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations. Establishes purchasing and inventory controls, manages supplier performance and cost, mitigates supply and operational risk, develops assigned employees, and implements consistent enterprise MRO standards in partnership with Maintenance, Reliability, Engineering, Operations, Finance, and Procurement.

WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING:

MRO Procurement and Sourcing

• Lead the purchasing of indirect MRO materials, parts, equipment, repairs, and services within delegated authority and company policy.
• Develop sourcing strategies; solicit and evaluate quotations; negotiate commercial terms; and select suppliers based on total value, quality, service, delivery, safety, and risk.
• Review requisitions and purchase orders for accuracy, approvals, specifications, contract requirements, and appropriate sourcing practices.
• Coordinate urgent and critical purchases and establish contingency sources to minimize production and maintenance disruption.

Inventory, Storeroom and Critical-Spare Management

• Establish inventory controls and business-unit stocking strategies aligned with equipment criticality, preventive and predictive maintenance plans, lead time, failure risk, replacement availability, and operational impact.
• Manage cycle counts, annual inventories, reconciliation, inventory optimization, and excess and obsolete inventory reviews.
• Ensure storerooms are secure, organized, labeled, and maintained in accordance with safety and housekeeping standards.
• Establish common item-naming, classification, unit-of-measure, manufacturer-part-number, storage-location, and approved-source standards.
• Identify duplicate items and opportunities to standardize materials across equipment, departments, and business units.
• Approve or govern new-item creation and changes to minimum, maximum, reorder-point, safety-stock, and criticality settings.
• Establish and periodically review critical-spare designations based on equipment criticality, lead time, failure risk, replacement availability, and operational impact.
• Develop mitigation plans for long-lead, obsolete, single-source, and high-risk materials.

Supplier, Cost and Risk Management

• Monitor supplier performance for safety, quality, delivery, responsiveness, cost, and compliance; address deficiencies and escalate material risks.
• Identify and document savings, cost avoidance, standardization, repair-versus-replace, warranty, and vendor-managed inventory opportunities.
• Partner with enterprise Procurement on contracts, preferred suppliers, competitive bids, category strategies, and cross-business-unit sourcing opportunities.
• Coordinate with Safety, Quality, Engineering, Legal, Finance, and Procurement, as applicable, to ensure suppliers and service providers meet technical, commercial, insurance, safety, quality, and compliance requirements.
• Ensure contractors and service suppliers satisfy applicable site-access, safety, insurance, and documentation requirements before work begins.
• Establish controls for repairable assets, including repair history, warranty tracking, turnaround time, repair-versus-replace analysis, and final disposition.

Controls, Systems, and Reporting

• Maintain purchasing and inventory procedures, segregation of duties, delegated authority, approval controls, and audit-ready records.
• Maintain effective ERP and/or CMMS processes and data quality for items, suppliers, purchase orders, receipts, inventory transactions, and equipment applicability.
• Establish controls for item creation, item-master changes, approved sources, stocking levels, and purchasing transactions.
• Track and report applicable MRO performance measures, including: Inventory accuracy, Stockout frequency, Critical-spare availability, Inventory value and turns, Excess and obsolete inventory, Emergency-purchase activity, Supplier on-time delivery, Open purchase-order aging, Purchase requisition-to-order cycle time, Invoice and receiving discrepancies, Documented savings and cost avoidance, Repairable-asset turnaround time, Resolve receiving, invoice, purchase-order, and supplier-payment discrepancies
• Support internal and external audits and implement corrective actions.

Maintenance Partnership and Planning

• Partner with Maintenance, Reliability, Engineering, Operations, Finance, and other functions to forecast preventive and corrective maintenance, shutdowns, planned outages, capital work, recurring demand, and emergency requirements.
• Confirm specifications, material requirements, lead times, delivery dates, staging plans, and contingency sources for maintenance events and projects.
• Communicate supply constraints, obsolescence concerns, long-lead or single-source risks, and mitigation plans to stakeholders.
• Participate in equipment and material specification discussions and recommend standardization and lifecycle-cost opportunities.
• Align MRO inventory and purchasing strategies with preventive and predictive maintenance requirements.

Team Leadership

• Select, train, coach, and evaluate assigned employees; establish priorities, performance expectations, and accountability.
• Cross-train team members and ensure adequate coverage for purchasing, receiving, inventory, and storeroom activities.
• Implement and sustain enterprise MRO purchasing, inventory, data, controls, reporting, and supplier-management standards while adapting execution to assigned business-unit needs.
• Lead continuous-improvement efforts that improve material availability, internal service, cost, safety, controls, data quality, and process consistency.
• Promote compliance with established purchasing, inventory, supplier, and system procedures.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

• Bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, business, engineering or a related field preferred.
• An equivalent combination of education, training and relevant experience may be considered.
• Five years of progressive experience in MRO procurement, industrial purchasing, materials management or storeroom operations, including at least two years of leadership or demonstrated lead responsibility.
• Manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of MRO materials, industrial equipment and maintenance operations.
• Proficiency with ERP and/or CMMS applications, purchase-to-pay processes and inventory controls; SAP experience preferred where applicable.
• Strong sourcing, negotiation, supplier management and analytical skills.
• Ability to analyze spend, inventory and performance data and translate findings into action.
• Strong communication, organization, problem-solving and cross-functional partnership skills.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and respond effectively to urgent operational needs.
• Professional certification through ISM, ASCM/APICS or a similar organization preferred.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

Includes frequently used office equipment, computer software programs, manuals, and engineering resources: Regularly use a computer and standard office equipment. Frequently walk through storeroom, warehouse and production areas and communicate by phone, radio and in person. Occasionally bend, reach, climb stairs and handle materials weighing up to 25 pounds; heavier items require approved material-handling equipment or assistance. Must be able to wear required personal protective equipment and safely access industrial work areas.

If you require a reasonable accommodation in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to Caitlin Zbikowski, Talent Manager @ c.zbikowski@mgpi.com.

If the above speaks to you, we’re excited to learn more about you! At MGP, we know that our people are our greatest strength. With different perspectives and unique ways of thinking, our employees are as varied as our products. We believe that inclusivity strengthens the organization and champions a company culture that is evolving to reflect all of us. Culture results from our behaviors, our personal commitment, our curiosity, how we collaborate, and the ways we courageously share our perspectives and expect others to do the same. Each of us can make a difference by fostering thinking and actions that empower us to connect, belong and grow together.

Compensation is competitive and is commensurate with experience. MGP offers exceptional medical, dental, vision, short and long-term disability, life insurance, 401(k) Match and PTO.

All successful candidates for this position will be required to submit to a criminal background check and drug test.