Inventory Manager
IFF · Leiden
Job Summary
IFF is a global leader in flavors, fragrances, food ingredients, and Health & Biosciences, delivering sustainable innovations that elevate everyday products.
Our Health & Biosciences team channels a passion for nature and bioscience into sustainable, life-enhancing technologies that power innovative solutions across healthcare, food, consumer, and industrial markets.
This role is based in one of our European H&B plant locations. Be part of a creative, solution-oriented team where together we can achieve greatness and make a real impact. Your potential is our inspiration.
Where You'll Make a Difference
- Own and execute the H&B inventory optimization roadmap across business units, regions, sites, product families, and inventory categories, balancing working-capital improvement with customer service, growth, supply constraints, and operational continuity.
- Translate inventory and working-capital objectives into prioritized actions with clear owners, due dates, expected benefits, residual risks, and escalation paths; maintain an integrated view of finished goods, semi-finished goods, raw materials, inventory in transit, blocked stock, excess inventory, and the inventory tail.
- Lead governance and execution for slow-moving, obsolete, and excess inventory (SLOB), including root-cause analysis, prevention, disposition, value recovery, action follow-through, and verification that improvements are sustained.
- Challenge and improve inventory segmentation, stocking strategies, safety stocks, inventory policies, and planning parameters using demand, lead-time, supply-variability, service, and risk inputs.
- Improve deployment and reduce inventory imbalances across plants, distribution centers, and regions; ensure strategic inventory builds and stocking changes have clear business rationale, financial visibility, governance, and accountable ownership.
- Serve as the H&B business owner and functional partner for AI, analytics, and automation initiatives by shaping use cases, defining business requirements, testing solutions, prioritizing enhancements, and translating model outputs into practical inventory actions.
- Establish decision-focused inventory reviews and integrate priorities into weekly Sales and Operations Execution (S&OE), monthly Sales, Inventory, and Operations Planning (SIOP), and the broader H&B operating system.
- Partner with Finance to validate working-capital improvement, scrap reduction, margin recovery, and other financial outcomes; identify recurring causes of excess inventory and build repeatable standards that prevent recurrence.
What Makes You the Right Fit
- Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, Business, Finance, Data Analytics, or a related field.
- Substantial experience in inventory management, inventory optimization, supply planning, materials planning, production planning, Integrated Business Planning (IBP), Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), or supply-chain analytics within a complex manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated record of delivering measurable improvements in working capital, inventory, SLOB, scrap, or inventory-tail performance.
- Deep understanding of inventory strategy, segmentation, safety-stock optimization, stocking policies, planning parameters, and service-level trade-offs.
- Proven ability to work independently, create structure in ambiguous situations, set priorities, and drive actions to closure with limited supervision.
- Proven ability to influence and mobilize cross-functional teams in a global matrix environment without direct authority.
- Hands-on experience partnering with technical teams on AI, advanced analytics, automation, or digital supply-chain solutions and translating outputs into operational and financial outcomes.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, facilitation, and change-leadership skills, with the judgment to challenge assumptions and balance cash, cost, service, capacity, and risk.
- Professional proficiency in English.
How Would You Stand Out?
- Experience implementing AI-enabled inventory optimization, control-tower, forecasting, exception-management, SLOB-reduction, or working-capital solutions, including user adoption and measurable value realization.
- Experience with SAP, SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP), Power BI, data visualization, workflow automation, or related technologies; an APICS Certified in Planning and Inventory Management (CPIM), Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP), or comparable certification is a plus.
- Experience facilitating S&OE, SIOP, or IBP operating rhythms in process industries, life sciences, food ingredients, biotechnology, or another complex global manufacturing environment.
Why Choose Us?
- Own a visible, enterprise-wide inventory agenda with clear accountability for measurable working-capital and operational results.
- Shape how AI, advanced analytics, and automation are applied to real supply-chain decisions and value creation.
- Partner across Demand and Supply Planning, Manufacturing, Commercial, Finance, Procurement, Logistics, Quality, Digital, Data Science, and Automation teams.
- Influence inventory strategy across a complex global network of businesses, regions, sites, and product families.
- Build scalable inventory-management standards and operating rhythms that create sustained improvement, not one-time reductions.
- Work with the autonomy to set priorities, challenge decisions constructively, and turn opportunities into verified results.
We are a global leader in taste, scent, and nutrition, offering our customers a broader range of natural solutions and accelerating our growth strategy. At IFF, we believe that your uniqueness unleashes our potential. We value the diverse mosaic of the ethnicity, national origin, race, age, sex, or veteran status. We strive for an inclusive workplace that allows each of our colleagues to bring their authentic self to work regardless of their religion, gender identity & expression, sexual orientation, or disability.
Visit IFF.com/careers/workplace-diversity-and-inclusion to learn more