VP, Supply Chain Strategy

Imperial Dade•Jersey City, NJ

About The Position

The Vice President, Supply Chain Strategy leads enterprise initiatives to improve inventory planning, product purchasing, and the translation of category strategies into supply chain execution. The role aligns product availability, inventory investment, supplier performance, and purchasing practices with customer service, profitable growth, and working capital objectives. It is a heavily project-based leadership position accountable for changing how teams work, evaluating systems, tools, and processes, building business cases, and leading cross-functional teams through redesign, pilots, implementation, and adoption. The position delivers planning and purchasing changes that capture synergies from network consolidation, including lower inventory investment, improved buying economics, and greater team productivity. It partners closely with Category Management, inventory planning and purchasing teams, field leadership, Sales, Finance, and IT to connect commercial priorities with practical planning and buying decisions across the distribution network. Success requires measurable efficiency and effectiveness improvements, with clear ownership to sustain results. The leader establishes and manages an initiative portfolio; improves planning, replenishment, purchasing, inventory productivity, and supplier performance; and leads consolidation-related planning and purchasing workstreams. The role also designs scalable processes, clarifies decision ownership, coordinates implementation and organizational change, monitors adoption, and verifies realized benefits against business cases while protecting customer service.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in supply chain, business, engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience.
15 years of progressive supply chain, inventory management, purchasing, or supplier management experience.
Leadership experience in a large distribution or multi-location business.
Demonstrated delivery of cross-functional projects from business case through implementation and adoption, with measurable service, inventory, productivity, or financial improvements.
Strong knowledge of demand planning, replenishment, inventory optimization, purchasing economics, and collaboration with category or merchandising teams.
Experience evaluating and implementing ERP, planning, purchasing, and analytical tools, including business cases, process redesign, user acceptance testing, and change management.
Demonstrated ability to deliver inventory, purchasing, or process integration projects supporting network consolidation, with disciplined synergy tracking and protection of customer service.
Strong financial judgment and executive communication skills.
Ability to build consensus, challenge established practices, develop team capabilities, and manage competing priorities.

Responsibilities

Build and manage a prioritized portfolio of inventory planning and purchasing initiatives, defining scope, business requirements, milestones, resources, risks, expected benefits, governance, and reporting to senior leadership.
Develop consistent inventory planning policies by product, location, demand pattern, and service requirement; improve forecasting, safety stock, reorder points, lead times, order quantities, and replenishment parameters.
Incorporate seasonality, customer commitments, supplier constraints, and field input into plans, and establish regular parameter reviews and exception management.
Redesign purchase order generation, review, approval, placement, and follow-up processes; improve order consolidation, buying cadence, supplier confirmations, and shortage escalation.
Evaluate minimum order quantities, freight thresholds, discounts, rebates, and payment terms in relation to total cost, inventory exposure, and customer service.
Partner with Category Management on assortment decisions, supplier programs, product introductions, substitutions, and discontinuations, translating category plans into forecasts, stocking policies, purchasing parameters, and inventory transition plans.
Assess commercial incentives against carrying costs, excess inventory risk, availability, and margin, and support supplier negotiations with demand and inventory analysis.
Lead projects to improve inventory turns and days on hand, reduce stockouts, and address slow-moving, excess, and obsolete inventory.
Develop inventory segmentation, interbranch transfer, and disposition strategies with field and category teams; partner with Finance to set inventory goals and validate working capital and profitability improvements.
Lead inventory planning and purchasing workstreams for network consolidation, modeling combined demand, inventory pooling, stocking locations, and replenishment flows with distribution leadership.
Align SKU assortments and supplier programs with Category Management, consolidate buying volume, and standardize planning and purchasing practices.
Quantify opportunities to reduce duplicate inventory, release working capital, improve purchase and inbound freight economics, and increase planner and buyer productivity.
Map current workflows, identify root causes and gaps, design scalable future processes, and clarify responsibilities and decision rights across planning, purchasing, Category Management, and the field.
Create standard procedures and controls that support consistent execution while accommodating justified local requirements.
Translate consolidation opportunities into sequenced projects with accountable owners, milestones, and dependencies tied to consolidation schedules.
Coordinate inventory transfers and run-down plans, supplier delivery changes, system and parameter updates, and team responsibilities; validate readiness before cutover and monitor availability and backlogs through stabilization.
Assess current capabilities and evaluate enhancements, new tools, automation, and process changes across forecasting, replenishment, purchasing, and analytics.
Compare system and process options based on business fit, total cost of ownership, integration, data readiness, scalability, user experience, and expected returns; use pilots and success criteria to validate improvements before broader rollout.
Translate approved recommendations into business requirements and delivery plans with IT and process owners; improve item and supplier master data, planning inputs, and reporting definitions.
Lead business testing, user acceptance, training, and rollout readiness; establish support and adoption measures, and simplify or retire redundant tools and workflows as replacements stabilize.
Engage users early, communicate process changes, train teams, coach leaders, establish post-launch support and accountable process owners, and confirm consistent use of new workflows.
Collaborate with Category Management and purchasing teams to evaluate supplier lead-time reliability, fill rates, order constraints, and supply risks, and develop corrective actions and supply alternatives.
Establish baselines, targets, and scorecards for initiatives and consolidation workstreams; track service, inventory, supplier performance, purchasing productivity, cycle time, and adoption.
Maintain a synergy register with owners, delivery dates, and dependencies; partner with Finance to distinguish recurring savings, working capital release, and capacity gains, account for transition costs, avoid double counting, and verify benefits against business cases.
Lead corrective action when initiative or consolidation results fall short.