Senior Director Procurement - Americas at Huntsman International LLC

Job Description:

Senior Director Procurement - Americas

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and specialty chemicals. Our chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. We operate more than 70 manufacturing, R&D and operations facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 9,000 associates within our three distinct business divisions. Huntsman offers unsurpassed opportunities to build a successful future. Our diverse portfolio creates a range of career fields including manufacturing, research and development, technical services, sales and marketing, customer service – and the list goes on.

Here, you can make an impact and make a difference. Come join us.

Huntsman is seeking a Senior Director Procurement supporting the Purchasing - Americas Division located in The Woodlands, Texas. This position will report to the Vice President, Global Purchasing & Logistics.

Nature and Scope:

• The Senior Director for the Americas Purchasing Team has responsibility for all purchasing (feedstocks, raw materials, goods, services and MRO and other areas of spend in the Americas region).

• The diversified portfolio of material, items and services purchased by this organization requires the jobholder to acquire and maintain a very wide and deep understanding of all spend/purchasing areas of the diversified businesses within Huntsman.

• The team is set to achieve maximum benefit from global leverage and synergies in terms of cost efficiencies, service and expertise.

• The jobholder must have a comprehensive knowledge of each of the business’s strategies and key drivers. Significant additional value created by Purchasing is more and more often created through the knowledge of how to extract value throughout vertical and horizontal integrated supply chains, including those of our suppliers, serving all Huntsman businesses.

• Supply interruptions and variations in product quality have a major impact on the Huntsman consuming plant production rates and margins. Procurement decisions and use of our own commercial leverage therefore must balance low cost objectives with requirements to minimize quantitative and qualitative risks to the business. Business value remains the overriding objective requiring a detailed understanding of the consuming sites economic drivers and risks.

Purpose:

• Provide overall leadership and management to Huntsman’s Corporate Purchasing Team in the Americas region. Manage all Direct and Indirect spend in the region across all businesses to maximize value and minimize the total cost of ownership of all spend to the Huntsman businesses.

• Manage the North & South American Sourcing team as an integral part of all the Huntsman businesses by developing and aligning Corporate Purchasing strategies and priorities with Huntsman business center strategies to deliver commercial excellence for each business as well as Huntsman overall.  Serve as Purchasing representative on various business leadership teams.  

• Through leadership, set, manage and deliver the targeted purchasing savings through exploiting the global, regional and business specific leverage and synergy opportunities.

• Manage the Americas’ Purchasing organization to develop and manage the long-term purchasing strategies for all key spend categories (Feed-stocks, Energy, Raw Materials & Chemicals, Contracts, Goods & Services, MRO, Toll Manufacturing and Capital spend) for the individual Huntsman businesses in the Americas region while ensuring continuous improvement to the organization’s associates, tools, procedures and culture.

• Lead global Data & Analytics team to ensure functional and business alignment with data and tool development while driving value creation from this team. 

• Actively participate in the Global Purchasing Leadership Team – to assist in setting and implementing strategic objectives, policies, procedures, and drive home projects both regionally and globally for the overall benefit of Huntsman.

• Manage and develop key senior level relationships with suppliers in major, global and regional organizations and companies.

• Ensure Corporate EH&S objectives are disseminated throughout the Americas Purchasing team and that all team members are focused on achieving those objectives.

In summary, as the Senior Director Procurement, you will:   

Develop Vision & Strategy

• Provide leadership and management to the organization to develop and deliver a Vision and Strategy which enhances continuous improvement in all aspects of professional commercial purchasing processes as well as excellence in several key management competencies and processes. 

Operate Organization as ‘Integral part of all Huntsman businesses

• Manage the Director Team and the wider Purchasing organization to operate as an integral part of all Huntsman businesses in order to be involved and contribute to the delivery of business strategies and specific business value targets. 
• Interface with Business leaders and key Managers across and throughout the businesses in order to secure mutual understanding and alignment of priorities.  Deliver service levels to business that are ever increasing and foster a relationship of true partnership. 
• Lead continuous transformation of organization to be “fit for purpose” as Huntsman’s businesses evolve over time.  High level of focus should be on developing and driving adoption of downstream/specialty chemical procurement strategies within the organization to ensure maximum business alignment and value capture, while also delivering reliable cost competitive upstream feedstocks.

Spend categories

• Feed-stock, Energy & Utilities
• Raw Materials & Chemicals
• Global Benzene
• Toll Manufacturing
• Contracts & Services
• MRO, Stores & Capex
• Travel & Expense

Jobholders role for all spend categories:

• Develop and maintain an understanding of the global/ regional markets, economics and drivers.
• Full involvement in the development of sourcing strategies for the key materials and services.  Understand importance for each business and Huntsman overall.
• Ensure ample communication and collaboration of sourcing strategies for key materials and services with the appropriate Huntsman business centers.
• Develop and maintain personal relationships with all key suppliers in each spend area.
• Participate in and as appropriate, lead negotiations of key contracts and deals across the spend categories.

Value delivery – Cost Down.

• Oversee the setting of team goals and targets, and delivery of repeat annual savings (variable & fixed cost reductions) unrelated to market movements each year
• Ensure savings are achieved by exploiting global, regional and business specific synergies and teams as well as conducting a professional commercial purchasing job.
• Ensure savings are delivered by understanding the total cost of ownership for the business specific supply chains and processes as well as meeting specific business strategies.

Business development & Acquisitions

• Support the businesses in challenging their supply chains and manufacturing strategies by exploiting ‘buy vs make’ opportunities as well as challenging current modus operandi in other spend categories.
• Lead or manage the Purchasing team’s involvement in Merger & Acquisition initiatives. This includes early involvement in due diligence activities, identification of saving opportunities.  Setting and achieving goals, as well as management and delivery of the identified and ‘promised’ savings/value delivery is essential.  Delivery of acquired business full integration into the Huntsman Corporate Purchasing function. 

Business Process development

• Drive the Purchasing Director Team to deliver innovation of purchasing processes across the businesses. Support the businesses in developing transactional excellence (including e-procurement) by improving ERP/systems efficiency as well as automation of manual processes in order to reduce non-added value activity and reduce fixed cost involved in procuring materials, goods & services.

Organizational development

• Through visible leadership behavior and actions develop the Americas Purchasing team to be a motivated organization in which High Performance Management techniques are imbedded processes and that high-quality people wish to work and develop their capabilities and careers.
• Develop, empower and recruit talent enabling the Americas Purchasing & Logistics organization to continue to deliver additional value to the businesses.
• Up-dated job descriptions and timely personal objectives setting, and regular performance appraisal is the standard. Personal development plans in place for all key individuals (business critical). This includes succession planning.

Compliance and Ethics

• Professionalism, ethics, and corporate compliance are essential to this role as purchasing is the face of the company to the outside world in many instances. Maintaining our reputation and fundamental values must be second nature to be successful in this position.  

Qualifications

You must possess the below minimum qualifications to be initially considered for this position. Preferred qualifications are in addition to the minimum requirements and are considered a plus factor in identifying top candidates.
 
The candidate must have an unrestricted right to work for Huntsman in the United States.

Minimum Qualifications

• A college degree in a related discipline is required, and an advanced degree is preferable.
• A minimum 10-15 years of professional experience in commercial functions and preferably 3-5 years of supply chain/manufacturing experience.
• Good knowledge of the individual business processes is a basic requirement. A fundamental appreciation of the behavior and characteristics of all Huntsman Businesses and the markets, in which they operate in is vital and is a prerequisite.
• Extensive experience leader Purchasing activities within a medium to large scale Specialty Chemical company is highly desirable as Huntsman seeks to onboard external expertise directly related to strategic management of downstream chemical manufacturing entities. 
• The Senior Director for the Americas Purchasing must interact at Business Leadership/Management levels within and across all Huntsman businesses, which requires a high degree of strategy- and strategic influencing competencies. Additionally, the jobholder must be able to develop and maintain personal relationships with our largest global and regional suppliers at Senior Management levels, which requires good social skills and competencies. Internal and external credibility is vital.
• Strategic Visioning, Strong Leadership, Teamwork and very strong Achieving Competencies are essential to this role. Additionally, the ability to maintain a high degree of self-esteem, resilience and self-motivation are important characteristics for the jobholder as the position is a very independent role with the line-manager (VP for Purchasing and Logistics. Intellectual rigor coupled with a high level of numeracy and analytical capability is also essential balanced with intuition and decision-making ability.

Huntsman is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all qualified applicants for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identification, sexual orientation and/or expression or any other characteristic protected by law in every location in which we have facilities national or local. 

 
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