Inventory Manager - Health & Biosciences

About the role

IFF, a global leader in flavors, fragrances, food ingredients and Health & Biosciences, is hiring an Inventory Manager for its Health & Biosciences team at one of its European plant locations in Leiden. The role owns and executes the 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.

Key responsibilities

• Translate inventory and working-capital objectives into prioritized actions with owners, due dates, expected benefits, risks and escalation paths, covering finished goods, semi-finished goods, raw materials, inventory in transit, blocked stock and excess inventory.
• Lead governance and execution of slow-moving, obsolete and excess inventory (SLOB), including root-cause analysis, prevention, disposition, value recovery and follow-through.
• Improve inventory segmentation, stocking strategies, safety stocks, policies and planning parameters using demand, lead time, supply variability, service and risk inputs.
• Reduce inventory imbalances across plants, distribution centers and regions, ensuring strategic builds and stocking changes have clear business rationale and accountability.
• Partner with AI, analytics and automation initiatives: shape use cases, define requirements, test solutions and turn model outputs into practical inventory actions.
• Run decision-focused inventory reviews integrated into weekly Sales and Operations Execution (S&OE), monthly Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning (SIOP) and the broader H&B operating system.
• Work with Finance to validate working-capital improvement, scrap reduction and margin recovery, and build standards that prevent excess inventory from recurring.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, Business, Finance, Data Analytics or a related field.
• Substantial experience in inventory management, optimization, supply planning, materials planning, production planning, IBP, S&OP or supply-chain analytics in a complex manufacturing environment.
• Proven record of measurable improvements in working capital, inventory, SLOB, scrap or inventory-tail performance.
• Ability to work independently, set priorities and drive actions to closure with limited supervision, and to influence cross-functional teams in a global matrix environment.
• Professional proficiency in English.

Required skills

• Hands-on experience partnering with technical teams on AI, advanced analytics, automation or digital supply-chain solutions.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, facilitation and change-leadership skills.
• Nice to have: experience with AI-enabled inventory optimization, control towers, forecasting, exception management, SLOB reduction or working-capital solutions; SAP, SAP IBP, Power BI, workflow automation; CPIM, CSCP or comparable certification; experience facilitating S&OE, SIOP or IBP in process industries, life sciences or food ingredients.