Mihaela Ion Email and Phone Number

Member of New Product Introduction team, handling major projects with large automotive companies in western Europe. Key responsibilities include:● Executing the direct material sourcing plan of NPIs for the entire product BOM for projects spanning up to 5 years with over one million parts produced lifetime.● Defined the supplier panel to be consulted, sent requests for quotation, lead e-auctions with key suppliers for the automotive industry worldwide.● Negotiated piece price and tooling costs for procurement of materials and obtained significant cost savings for contracts worth tens of millions of euros.● Participated in the design of the new product with the Application Engineers and helped the supplier understand the design feasibility through APQP process coordination and PUGH analyses.● Presented final source recommendations to key stakeholders in Sourcing Committee and released Supplier Award Letters.● Issued Purchase Orders for new tooling, launched specific batches for homologation as per automotive standards, monitored deliveries, and improved supplier performance.● Coordinated with other functional areas such as Program Managers, Design Engineers, Supplier Quality, Commodity, and Sales Team.● Performed extra activities such as mentoring, experience sharing in the team, lessons learned and sharing of best practices.

Used the Rough Cut Capacity Planning technique to identify capacity issues for the entire global portfolio of suppliers:● Performed the capacity studies to verify that the supplier's capacities are in line with the production schedule for all major components, identified the need for additional capacity requirements when manufacturing plan changed. ● Assessed the investment costs required in situations where the supplier's capacity was not enough to meet the production demands.● Evaluated the risks to current plan and capacity gap closure by new tooling release within lead-time.● Capacity installation and documentation; contracts signing with suppliers.● Coordinated with other functional areas such as Supply Base, Supply Chain, Program Managers.

Responsible for managing relationships with suppliers and ensuring timely delivery of goods to production plants worldwide.● Forecasting short- and long-term material requirements.● Tracking and maintaining inventory levels, ensuring availability of materials to meet production targets.● Performing capacity analyses and resolving issues through scheduling prioritization.● Continuously monitoring, evaluating, and improving supplier performance.● Managing supplier relations, resolving claims and disputes, trainings for vendor development procedures, on site visits to support the resolution of crisis situations.● Creating and loading forecasts for New Product Introductions to meet projects milestones.