Director of Global Supply Chain

Nextern•Maple Grove, MN

3d•$160,000 - $230,000

About The Position

The Director, Global Supply Chain provides global functional leadership for Nextern’s end-to-end supply chain organization. The role is responsible for building and leading an integrated global supply chain that supports the company’s growth, manufacturing network, customer commitments, and increasingly complex global operations. It has end-to-end responsibility across strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, supply planning, inventory management, materials management, warehousing, logistics, and supply-chain risk. The Director will establish the organizational capabilities, processes, systems, governance, and infrastructure needed to operate as a cohesive global function while maintaining strong connections to Nextern’s manufacturing sites. A key priority is advancing Global Supply Chain as a core element of the Nextern Operating System (NOS), integrating processes, systems, data, management routines, and capabilities across the network to improve consistency, transparency, accountability, and scalability. This role requires a leader who can build organizations and capabilities, develop functional leaders, establish standards and operating mechanisms, and partner effectively across sites and functions. Success involves balancing global functional leadership with local manufacturing and customer requirements. The position supports teams in the United States, Costa Rica, Vietnam, and China, and requires routine travel of up to 15%, with flexibility for higher travel based on business needs.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, Business, or a related discipline.
Significant progressive leadership experience across multiple supply-chain disciplines within a manufacturing environment.
Demonstrated experience leading across multiple sites, regions, or countries in a global supply-chain organization.
Broad experience across strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, planning, inventory, materials management, warehousing, and logistics.
Demonstrated success building or maturing supply-chain organizations, processes, systems, and management infrastructure.
Experience implementing common processes, governance, KPIs, and operating mechanisms across decentralized or multi-site operations.
Strong understanding of ERP/MRP-enabled planning environments and the role of systems, master data, analytics, and transactional discipline in supply-chain execution.
Experience leading organizational and process transformation while maintaining day-to-day operational performance.
Strong business and financial acumen, including understanding of inventory, working capital, material cost, supplier economics, and operational performance.
Strong communication, influence, negotiation, and change-leadership capabilities.
Demonstrated ability to develop leaders and build high-performing teams across geographic and organizational boundaries.
Ability to travel routinely up to 15%, with flexibility for periods of higher travel based on business needs.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree.
Experience within medical device, life sciences, or another highly regulated manufacturing environment.
Experience working within complex outsourced manufacturing, contract manufacturing, or customer-driven manufacturing models.

Responsibilities

Provide functional leadership and direction for Nextern’s global supply chain organization, including teams supporting the United States, Costa Rica, Vietnam, and China.
Establish and execute a global supply chain strategy aligned with business strategy, growth plans, manufacturing footprint, and customer requirements.
Build a cohesive global function with clear accountability, decision rights, standards, priorities, and performance expectations.
Develop the organizational structure, leadership capability, and functional expertise needed to support company growth and operational complexity.
Set global priorities while maintaining appropriate flexibility for local site execution and customer requirements.
Build working relationships among global supply chain leadership, manufacturing site leadership, and enterprise functions.
Lead the global approach to strategic sourcing, procurement, supplier management, and supplier development.
Establish category and sourcing strategies that balance cost, quality, delivery, capacity, continuity of supply, and long-term business requirements.
Strengthen supplier selection, qualification, negotiation, contracting, performance management, and relationship management.
Coordinate supplier negotiations and use Nextern’s global purchasing scale where appropriate.
Establish consistent supplier performance measures, governance, and escalation mechanisms.
Partner with Quality and Operations to improve supplier performance, address systemic issues, and strengthen supplier capabilities.
Identify and manage supply continuity risks, capacity constraints, geographic risks, sole-source dependencies, and other supply-base vulnerabilities.
Provide executive functional ownership for demand planning, supply planning, SIOP, production and material planning, MRP, and inventory management.
Partner with the Principal, Global Supply Planning & Inventory Strategy to develop and deploy common planning methodologies, inventory strategies, planning analytics, and MRP governance.
Establish planning processes, operating rhythms, accountability, and metrics that improve visibility and support faster, fact-based decisions.
Balance customer service, manufacturing requirements, supply continuity, working capital, and inventory risk.
Strengthen inventory governance, including excess and obsolete inventory, safety stock, inventory health, and other key inventory drivers.
Connect planning processes across commercial, customer program, operations, finance, and supply-chain teams.
Establish global standards for materials management, warehousing, logistics, and inventory control.
Strengthen material-flow processes from suppliers through manufacturing operations to customers.
Develop consistent approaches to warehouse management, material handling, inventory accuracy, transaction discipline, transportation, and logistics performance.
Partner with site and operations leadership to improve material availability while reducing unnecessary inventory, handling, expediting, and operational complexity.
Identify opportunities to improve the global logistics network, service performance, cost, and supply-chain resilience.
Lead the continued development and deployment of the Nextern Operating System (NOS) across Global Supply Chain.
Build an integrated and scalable supply chain operating model by maturing its processes, systems, infrastructure, data, management routines, and organizational capabilities.
Establish common global processes, standards, governance, KPIs, and management routines across supply chain disciplines.
Assess and strengthen the systems, tools, data, and infrastructure supporting an increasingly connected global supply chain.
Drive process integration across sites and functions, defining standards, ownership, decision rights, interfaces, and appropriate local flexibility.
Reduce unnecessary fragmentation and site-specific practices where common processes and standards can improve performance and scalability.
Establish process discipline, data integrity, visibility, accountability, and repeatability throughout the supply-chain organization.
Embed structured problem solving, continuous improvement, standard work, performance management, and fact-based decision making in day-to-day leadership.
Partner with Operations, Quality, Finance, Commercial, IT, and other functions to strengthen end-to-end processes.
Build sustainable capabilities that reduce dependence on individual knowledge and enable the company to scale.
Own global supply chain functional standards, talent, organizational capability, processes, priorities, governance, and performance.
Partner with site leaders to integrate global supply-chain priorities into day-to-day manufacturing operations.
Maintain clear accountability between global functional leadership and local site execution.
Support site leaders in resolving significant material, supplier, planning, inventory, and logistics challenges.
Ensure global standards create value for manufacturing sites and customers.
Foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across the global supply chain network.
Build, develop, and retain a strong global supply chain leadership team.
Set clear expectations and accountability while empowering regional and site leaders.
Develop functional talent and succession pipelines across supply-chain disciplines and geographies.
Establish appropriate competencies, career paths, and development opportunities for supply-chain professionals.
Coach leaders to operate effectively in a matrixed, global manufacturing environment.
Create a culture of accountability, collaboration, transparency, disciplined execution, continuous improvement, and proactive problem solving.
Establish global supply chain KPIs and management routines that provide visibility into performance, risks, and priorities.
Use data and analytics to identify systemic issues, understand root causes, prioritize resources, and drive sustainable improvement.
Partner with Finance to improve visibility into inventory, purchase commitments, material cost, working capital, and supply-chain financial performance.
Partner with Commercial and customer-facing teams to reflect supply-chain capabilities and constraints in customer commitments and business decisions.
Provide the COO and executive leadership team with visibility into significant supply-chain risks, performance trends, capability gaps, and improvement priorities.