Materials Specialist

About the role

Kraft Heinz is hiring a Materials Specialist in San José Province, Costa Rica, on a full-time basis. The role plans and ensures the availability of raw and packaging materials for internal and external manufacturing, manages purchase orders and supplier commitments, and keeps inventory balanced against service levels and working capital.

Key responsibilities

• Plan and ensure the availability of raw and packaging materials according to production requirements.
• Create and manage Purchase Orders, monitor deliveries and supplier commitments, and manage daily deliveries by production needs, supplier availability and warehouse capacity.
• Monitor material requirements through MRP and investigate discrepancies in master data, BOMs, calendars, lead times and planning parameters.
• Maintain and optimise inventory and stock policies, identify shortages, excess stock and obsolete materials, and develop mitigation plans and contingency scenarios.
• Track and analyse inventory performance, consumption versus plan, lead-time deviations and other planning indicators.
• Partner with Procurement and suppliers on MOQs, service levels and inventory optimisation, and coordinate alternative sourcing and inventory buffers.
• Support the creation and maintenance of materials and SKUs in SAP, and participate in innovation and value engineering projects for new product launches.
• Translate long-term production plans into material requirements, inventory projections and supplier capacity needs, and provide backup support to Production Supply Planning.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain, Logistics, Business or a related field.
• Approximately 2-4 years of experience in materials planning, supply planning, inventory management, procurement planning or a related Supply Chain role.
• Experience with MRP and SAP; experience with SAP MDG is a plus.
• Spanish and English proficiency for working in a regional environment.
• Analytical, proactive and able to anticipate supply risks, with strong critical thinking and problem-solving.

Required skills

• Knowledge of inventory management, production planning, stock policies and materials availability.
• Intermediate Excel skills; advanced capabilities highly desirable.
• Power BI, Tableau or other BI tools is a plus.
• Project management, product launches or innovation projects exposure is desirable.