Head - Plant Quality
Job Description / Area of Responsibility
Enable the plant’s growth from approximately €250 million to €600 million by 2030 by achieving customer quality targets, securing timely APQP/PPAP and quality-gate approvals, ensuring launch readiness, and maintaining stable serial-production quality and delivery performance. Develop and execute a multi-year plant quality strategy aligned with the 2030 growth plan. Translate business objectives into departmental targets, resources, competencies, technology investments, audit plans, and budgets. Maintain the Quality Management System and required automotive certifications, and report performance and risks to plant and business leadership. Drive profitability by reducing scrap, rework, process rejection, sorting, premium freight, warranty, and customer-complaint costs. Establish measurable cost-of-poor-quality targets, robust root-cause analysis, effective corrective and preventive actions, and continuous improvement across the plant. Lead quality planning and industrialization for new products, customers, production lines, transfers, and technologies. Ensure robust APQP, design and process risk analysis, control plans, measurement concepts, capability validation, traceability, safe-launch controls, and release criteria for complex safety-critical mechatronic products. Define, implement, and continuously improve plant-wide quality assurance for incoming material, mechanical manufacturing and assembly, electric-motor processes, electronics/PCBA production, SMT lines, final inspection, and product release. Ensure effective process controls, equipment and measurement-system capability, soldering and assembly quality, traceability, change control, layered process audits, product audits, quality gates, error-proofing, and rapid containment of deviations. Drive preventive quality and zero-defect thinking with Production, Engineering, Maintenance, Supply Chain, and R&D. Act as the senior plant quality representative to customers, certification bodies, suppliers, central Quality, and global locations. Build strong partnerships with Plant Management, Production, Engineering, R&D, Purchasing/Supplier Quality, Supply Chain, Sales, Project Management, Maintenance, EHS, and HR. Lead customer escalations, audits, quality reviews, and cross-functional recovery plans. Lead, coach, and develop the Quality organization. Define roles, objectives, succession plans, and competency matrices; close capability gaps in safety-critical product quality, electronics and SMT process quality, mechanical and motor technologies, auditing, data analysis, and structured problem-solving. Develop future leaders and ensure disciplined performance management. Ensure compliance with customer-specific, statutory, regulatory, product-safety, environmental, and Quality Management System requirements. Support responsible material and process controls, safe handling of electronic manufacturing materials, audit readiness, documented product conformity, and timely escalation of product-safety or compliance risks. Lead containment and recovery for critical quality incidents, customer line stops, product-safety concerns, major audit findings, and field issues. Provide fact-based risk assessments and timely executive communication, coordinate cross-functional task forces, verify sustainable corrective actions, and perform other strategic assignments from Plant or Business leadership.
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, Mechatronics, Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, or a comparable discipline. Minimum 15 years of progressive quality experience in automotive or another highly regulated, safety-critical manufacturing environment, including at least 8 years in senior quality leadership and significant plant-level responsibility. Proven exposure to high-volume mechatronic products integrating mechanical, electronic, motor, and embedded technologies. Lead-auditor qualification for IATF 16949 / VDA 6.3 preferred. Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent structured problem-solving certification desirable. Demonstrated leadership of major product and process launches, industrialization, capacity expansion, production transfers, and quality turnarounds. Hands-on experience establishing or scaling electronics/PCBA and SMT quality controls, safe-launch governance, traceability, audits, and customer approvals. Proven leadership of a multidisciplinary Quality organization of comparable scale, including managers and technical specialists. Experience setting departmental targets, managing budgets and resources, developing successors, and leading cross-functional teams through customer or product-safety crises. Experience working with global customers, suppliers, certification bodies, central functions, and international manufacturing or R&D locations. Able to communicate and influence effectively across cultures, functions, and seniority levels.
Automotive Quality Management Systems: IATF 16949, VDA 6.3, internal and customer-specific requirements Quality leadership for highly safety-critical mechatronic products and high-volume manufacturing Advanced quality methods: APQP, PPAP, FMEA, control plans, SPC, MSA, capability studies, 8D and root-cause analysis Electronics and SMT manufacturing quality: PCBA process controls, soldering, inspection, testing, traceability and defect prevention Mechanical, electromechanical and electric-motor manufacturing technologies, assembly processes, testing and metrology Customer quality management, escalation handling, audits, product-safety communication and field-issue resolution Supplier quality management, incoming quality, supplier development and change control Quality strategy, target deployment, cost-of-poor-quality management, budgeting and performance reporting Leadership of large, multidisciplinary Quality teams; organization design, coaching and succession planning Quality data analytics, digital quality systems, laboratory/inspection strategy and measurement-system governance Cross-functional stakeholder management and clear executive communication in complex or crisis situations Professional proficiency in English; Hindi or relevant local language preferred
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