Category Manager

About us

The Damen Shipyards Group, the world’s leading specialist ship builder, operates 35 yards globally with around 12,000 employees. After some difficult years we are ready to go for the future. Our orderbook has grown over the last year and the continuously growing demand  of more energy friendly ships fits our strategic direction to become the most sustainable shipbuilder in the world.

Our strategy is built on three pillars: sustainability, digitalization and operational excellence. The group is split in 8 divisions, which are all focusing on different market segments with a small corporate headquarter with general management and expertise centers. One of those expertise centers is Procurement and Supply Chain Management.

Every division is having its own supply chain management department and is free to take their own procurement decisions. The expertise center is responsible for managing the relationship with the jointly used suppliers and is focusing on the category strategies that are most relevant for our future, propulsion and electrical, automation & digitization. They also coordinate alignment of processes and secure that the network of procurement and supply chain professionals is functioning well.

Within this department we are looking for enthusiastic and experienced candidates to help maintain and build a supply base which is innovative and can help us make the next steps to realize our strategic ambition.

The role

A category manager manages assigned categories and their suppliers in close cooperation with the stakeholders in the divisions. The category strategy is set and maintained together with the division.

We are looking for two Category Managers with different focus areas. The two categories are as follows:

THE CATEGORIES:

Electrical, Automation and Digitization, an exciting category or three exciting and closely connected categories in the heart of our strategic digitalization direction. This category is characterized by an ongoing changing solution landscape driven by technical developments and continuously increasing customer requirements both in digitization and electrification. These changes ask for very active in,- and external stakeholder management; suppliers, R&D and other partners, in a continuously changing supplier landscape. Strong technical affinity with this category is essential to be successful.

Propulsion. The traditional engines no longer meet the worldwide emission & environmental responsibility requirements. Globally the maritime world is testing new fuels. We want to stay at the forefront of this change. Many options like hydrogen, synthetic fuels, LNG and others are still open. We strive to cooperate closely with the leading suppliers to set the right standards on the way forward.
On the other side the current solution must be sourced efficiently taking into account that in many cases they represent up to 30% of the value of a ship.
Also in this category technical affinity is essential to be successful.

Key accountabilities

• Develop and implement category and sourcing strategies of assigned categories so that all business requirements are being met
• Manage the stakeholder landscape to secure proper deployment of the category strategy
• Periodical price negotiations
• Actively participate in the DAMEN supply chain network and support the divisions and R&D on projects
• Supplier management; define improvement roadmaps jointly with the divisions on logistics, quality, digitization, etc.
• Drive partnership and cooperation with innovation partners to become world class in relation to sustainability and digitization
• Prepares his/her own tasks and ensures a realistic planning of own work
• Escalation management

Skills & experience

• Knowledge at the level of Bachelor degree, preferably knowledge and / or work experience equivalent to NEVI 2 level regarding supplier contracting and supplier management
• Spider in the web, easy to connect to; empathetic and ambitious personality with customer focus on win-win collaboration within DAMEN and with external parties
• Excellent communication skills verbal and in writing.
• Very strong technical affinity with a well-developed commercial antenna
• Proactive self-starter, capable to work efficiently, in a structured manner with great accuracy
• Process orientation with focus on continuous improvement
• At least 5-10 years of relevant work experience

What we offer

A challenging procurement role in which your ability in finding new suppliers and managing the supplier network is essential for DAMEN in achieving her strategic ambitions. The spend in Propulsion as well as in AED is 250+ MEuro.