Tool Buyer

Job Description:
ITW Shakeproof – Tooling Buyer
Business Description:
ITW Shakeproof serves major automotive and industrial OEMs and their tier suppliers with metal, cold-headed fasteners totaling approximately $210M in revenue. In addition to ITW’s industry leading research and development capabilities, ITW Shakeproof enhances our customers’ competitive advantage by:
• Maintaining advanced eng
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ineering and manufacturing facilities in North America.
• Exchanging products, process, and benchmarking information with sister units worldwide.
• Continually improving processes, material, and designs to ensure every product exceeds customer specifications while providing unparalleled value.
Job Description:
ITW Shakeproof is seeking a Tool Room Buyer who is responsible for direct oversight and management of the Machesney Park Plant Tool Room. The Tooling Buyer is responsible for sourcing, purchasing, expediting, and managing tooling and related supplies required to support fastener manufacturing operations. This position works closely with Engineering, Tool Room, Production, Quality, Maintenance, and outside suppliers to ensure the timely availability of tooling that meets required specifications, quality standards, cost objectives, and production schedules.
The Tool Buyer will have particular responsibility for tooling used in cold heading, forming, threading, secondary operations, and inspection processes. The role requires strong purchasing, supplier-management, technical interpretation, and organizational skills, along with the ability to respond quickly to changing production requirements.
Essential Responsibilities:
Tooling Procurement
• Purchase production tooling including dies, punches, pins, inserts, knockouts, cutters, thread rolls, taps, drills, carbide tooling, gauges, and other manufacturing tooling.
• Review purchase requisitions, engineering drawings, specifications, tooling requirements, and historical purchasing information before placing orders.
• Obtain and evaluate supplier quotations based on price, quality, lead time, capability, and total cost.
• Create and maintain purchase orders and ensure accurate pricing, quantities, revisions, delivery dates, and specifications.
• Monitor open tooling orders and proactively expedite critical items to prevent production interruptions.
• Coordinate emergency tooling requirements when breakdowns, excessive wear, quality issues, or unexpected demand threaten production schedules.
• Identify cost-saving opportunities through competitive bidding, alternative sourcing, blanket orders, volume agreements, standardization, and supplier negotiations.
Supplier Management
• Develop and maintain effective relationships with tooling manufacturers, machine shops, carbide suppliers, gauge suppliers, and other key vendors.
• Evaluate supplier performance related to quality, delivery, responsiveness, lead time, and cost.
• Work with suppliers to resolve late deliveries, incorrect tooling, quality concerns, invoice discrepancies, and other performance issues.
• Identify and qualify alternate suppliers to reduce single-source risk and improve supply continuity.
• Support supplier negotiations and sourcing strategies for high-use and critical tooling.
• Coordinate tooling repair, rework, sharpening, recoating, and refurbishment when economically appropriate.
Manufacturing & Technical Support
• Work closely with Tool Room, Engineering, Production, Quality, and Maintenance personnel to understand tooling requirements and priorities.
• Read and interpret tooling drawings, prints, specifications, part numbers, revisions, and basic dimensional requirements.
• Develop an understanding of tooling used in cold heading, cold forming, thread rolling, machining, trimming, pointing, and secondary operations.
• Ensure suppliers receive current drawings and revision information when sourcing custom tooling.
• Assist Engineering and Manufacturing in sourcing tooling for new-product launches, process cha

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