Purchasing & Supply Chain Lead — Manufacturing
About Cheelcare
Cheelcare is a growing Canadian manufacturer of innovative mobility products that improve independence and quality of life for wheelchair users. We design, assemble, and support complex products that require strong coordination between production, inventory, quality, engineering, accounting, suppliers, and customer fulfillment.
As we continue to grow, we are looking for a hands-on Purchasing & Supply Chain Lead to build a more disciplined, scalable purchasing function while also managing day-to-day procurement activity.
The Opportunity
This is not a maintenance purchasing role. We are looking for someone who can come in, understand our current purchasing and inventory processes, improve them, and help us scale.
In the beginning, you will be directly responsible for buying parts, managing suppliers, monitoring lead times, issuing purchase orders, expediting materials, and helping ensure production has what it needs. Over time, you will build the systems, procedures, reporting, and supplier structure needed to support a larger manufacturing operation — and eventually help build and lead a purchasing team.
This is an ideal role for a strong Senior Buyer, Buyer/Planner, Purchasing Supervisor, or early-career Purchasing Manager who wants the opportunity to own and build the purchasing function in a growing manufacturing company.
Key Responsibilities
Purchasing & Supplier Management
- Manage day-to-day purchasing of components, materials, supplies, outside services, and production-related items.
- Issue purchase orders, confirm supplier acknowledgements, track delivery dates, and follow up on late or at-risk orders.
- Source new suppliers and obtain competitive quotes for existing and new components.
- Negotiate pricing, payment terms, delivery terms, minimum order quantities, and lead times.
- Maintain strong supplier relationships and act as the primary purchasing contact for key vendors.
- Monitor supplier performance, including delivery reliability, quality issues, responsiveness, and cost competitiveness.
- Support supplier onboarding, qualification, documentation, and periodic review.
Inventory, Planning & Production Support
- Work closely with production, inventory, engineering, quality, and accounting to ensure materials are available when needed.
- Review inventory levels, open production requirements, lead times, and usage trends to determine purchasing needs.
- Help establish reorder points, safety stock levels, min/max levels, and purchasing triggers.
- Support production planning by identifying material shortages, long-lead items, and supply risks.
- Maintain accurate purchasing and supplier data in the ERP/inventory system.
- Help reduce stockouts, emergency purchases, over-ordering, obsolete inventory, and excess carrying costs.
Process & System Development
- Build and document scalable purchasing procedures, workflows, and approval controls.
- Improve how purchase requests, purchase orders, supplier quotes, receiving, invoice matching, and purchasing records are managed.
- Develop standard tools for RFQs, supplier comparisons, purchase approvals, supplier scorecards, and lead-time tracking.
- Create purchasing dashboards or reports that show open POs, overdue orders, upcoming shortages, supplier performance, inventory risks, and cost trends.
- Work with leadership to define purchasing KPIs and reporting cadence.
- Help integrate purchasing discipline with inventory control, accounting, production planning, and quality requirements.
- Identify opportunities to automate, simplify, or standardize purchasing workflows.
Strategic Growth
- Develop a roadmap for maturing the purchasing function as the company scales.
- Recommend when additional purchasing, planning, or supply chain roles should be added.
- Help define the future structure of the purchasing team.
- Support cost-reduction initiatives, supplier consolidation, dual-sourcing, and risk mitigation.
- Participate in new product introduction, engineering change, and supplier selection discussions.
- Help build a purchasing function that supports growth, compliance, margin improvement, and manufacturing reliability.
What Success Looks Like
In the first 90 days, you will have a clear understanding of our purchasing process, supplier base, inventory risks, open PO status, and immediate material constraints.
Within 6 months, you will have improved purchasing visibility, supplier follow-up, reorder discipline, and purchasing documentation.
Within 12 months, you will have helped establish a scalable purchasing system with defined procedures, supplier performance tracking, inventory planning rules, and reporting that supports production growth.
Longer term, you will help build and lead the purchasing team needed to support a larger manufacturing operation.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of purchasing, procurement, buyer/planner, supply chain, or materials management experience.
- Experience in a manufacturing, assembly, hardware, medical device, automotive, electronics, mobility, or industrial product environment.
- Strong understanding of purchase orders, RFQs, supplier management, lead times, inventory planning, and production support.
- Experience working with ERP, MRP, inventory, or manufacturing software.
- Strong Excel skills and comfort working with purchasing, inventory, and supplier data.
- Ability to negotiate pricing, terms, and delivery commitments with suppliers.
- Strong communication skills and ability to work cross-functionally with production, accounting, inventory, quality, engineering, and leadership.
- Highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to manage multiple open orders, priorities, and supplier issues at once.
- Comfortable working in a growing company where systems are still being built.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience building or improving purchasing processes in a small or mid-sized manufacturing company.
- Experience with inventory control, cycle counts, BOMs, reorder points, safety stock, and production planning.
- Experience with supplier scorecards, purchasing KPIs, cost-reduction projects, or supplier development.
- Experience purchasing mechanical, electrical, electronic, fabricated, machined, or custom-manufactured components.
- Familiarity with ISO, quality documentation, regulated manufacturing, or medical device environments.
- SCMP, CPIM, CSCP, or related supply chain/procurement education or certification is an asset.
- Experience helping implement or improve ERP/MRP purchasing workflows.
Ideal Candidate Profile
You are hands-on enough to chase a late shipment, issue a PO, fix bad supplier data, and solve a production shortage — but strategic enough to see that the real job is building a purchasing system that prevents the same problems from happening again.
You are comfortable in a growing manufacturing environment where not everything is fully documented yet. You bring structure without creating unnecessary bureaucracy. You know how to balance cost, quality, lead time, cash flow, inventory risk, and production urgency.
Most importantly, you want ownership. You are not just looking to process purchase orders — you want to build the purchasing function.
Compensation
Compensation will be based on experience.
Expected range: $80,000–$105,000 annually, with flexibility for a more experienced candidate who has already built or led a purchasing function in a manufacturing environment.
Job Type
Full-time, permanent.
Location
Markham, Ontario.
How to Apply
Please submit your resume and a brief cover letter describing your experience in manufacturing purchasing, supplier management, inventory planning, and/or building purchasing processes.
Pay: $70,000.00-$105,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
