What are the responsibilities and job description for the Corporate Director Traffic position at Southern Furniture Industries?
The Corporate Traffic Director oversees the inbound and outbound transportation and traffic functions for the companies of Southern Motion and Fusion Furniture. This role will optimize the appropriate delivery methods to minimize delivery costs and maximize customer satisfaction. At the same time, this role will manage and direct the global ocean freight program with Man Wah Corporate for all inbound materials along with the flow in and out of the Foreign Trade Zone. This position develops and maintains transportation systems and procedures to maximize delivery efficiency while working with the Distribution Department to assure the execution of planned CPUs on all prepaid shipments. In addition, this role manages the relationships with the freight forwarders, truckload, intermodal, ltl, and small parcel carriers.
The Corporate Director Traffic will oversee a subordinate staff of five people in the day-to-day performance of their jobs.
Responsibilities
● Lead the transition of the logistics functions performed in the legacy systems to SAP.
● Oversee the weekly Load Building process in the Cyroc/SAP system.
● Assures that the house carriers and selective CPU carriers have ample equipment to meet the weekly load plans and pick up schedules.
● Works with operations, sales, and customers on problem resolutions
● Direct and manage the activities in and out of the Foreign Trade Zone from a systems perspective and assure that the proper reporting is in place to meet daily and annual reporting requirements.
● Develops deep technical understanding of the Cyroc/SAP and Fusion systems as it relates to the loading, shipping, and invoicing functions by being the subject matter expert.
● Leads, develops, and manages a team of transportation staff and assures that there is a trained backup for each function across divisions.
● Participates in developing bids and support the estimation teams with relevant pricing data for current and future projects.
● Analyzes constantly all carriers, ltl, truckload, freight forwarders, and intermodal, to align with the most suitable mode/carrier who can deliver the best service at competitive pricing to a given market area.
● Overseer’s and manages the timely freight bill audit and approval process.
● Works with Finance to clear up any out of period carrier freight bills to assure a clean month end close.
● Manages the relationships with all the carriers, brokers, and freight forwarders to assure SFI has the best carrier business partners.
● Manages the weekly shipping metrics, weekly fuel surcharge communication to internal customers.
● Coordinates with Merchandising, Production and Shipping to ensure the timely shipping of products to the furniture markets and or any other special projects.
● Facilitates the co-loading of Fusion, SM, The Mix and other stocking programs were possible to reduce costs to the customers and improve delivery cycle time.
● Provides oversight into the most cost effective, service focused approach to load building optimizing truckload, multistep, and ltl shipments.
● Assures that CPU customers are actively scheduling their pickups in a timely manner.
● Works with Sr. Management to ensure appropriate profitability is delivered by the Logistics Department to the company.
Requirements
● BS in business, operations, logistics, and or comparable job experience
● Self-driven personality willing to take on additional responsibilities when necessary.
● Ability to work under stress while multi-tasking various freight related activities.
● Strong leadership skills
● Knowledge of transportation modes, carriers, rates, and value propositions along with the ability to manage effective relationships with the carriers and freight forwarders
● Ability to deal with and effectively communicate with customers, sales staff, and carriers in a calm and professional manner
● Knowledge of the SAP or comparable ERP system and/or capability to quickly grasp innovative technology
● Effective people skills and ability to develop, train, and manage a diverse workforce.
● Effective written and oral communication skills