INTERIM TEXTILE LEADERSHIP POSITION - HEAD QUALITY

Location: Bhiwandi, Vasai, Sagwara, Badnawar, Vaishali

Assignment: Interim - 6 Months plus

Reporting to: CEO

Experience: 20 - 35 years

Industry: Apparel / Garment / Textile Manufacturing

About the Organisation:

Our client is a well-established Indian apparel and performance-clothing manufacturing group with more than three decades of operating heritage.

The Group operates a large multi-location manufacturing network with 8,000+ employees and annual production exceeding 20 million garments. Its product portfolio includes rainwear, winterwear, work & safety wear, institutional/corporate apparel, fabrics and emerging climate-performance products.

With continued expansion and increasing product and customer complexity, the organisation is strengthening its professional quality-management systems and leadership capability.

The Opportunity:

We are seeking an experienced Interim Head - Quality with 20 - 35 years of apparel-industry experience to lead a six-month plus, quality transformation and stabilisation mandate.

The individual will report directly to the CEO and will work across manufacturing locations to establish consistent quality standards, strengthen quality systems, reduce defects and rework, and build greater accountability throughout the manufacturing process.

This role is particularly suited to a senior Quality professional who has worked with large apparel exporters, branded apparel manufacturers, institutional customers or technically demanding products.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Quality Leadership:

- Take overall responsibility for quality performance across manufacturing locations.

- Establish common quality standards, processes and accountability across factories.

- Review existing QA/QC structures, manpower and capability.

- Strengthen quality ownership at Factory, Production and Supervisor levels.

- Establish clear quality KPIs and review mechanisms.

2. Process Quality:

- Drive quality at source rather than relying primarily on end-of-line inspection.

- Strengthen inline, end-line and final inspection systems.

- Review defect trends, root causes and corrective/preventive actions.

- Reduce rework, rejection and customer complaints.

- Strengthen process-control systems across cutting, stitching, seam sealing, welding, finishing and packing.

- Review critical-to-quality parameters for different product categories.

3. Quality Systems:

- Standardise SOPs and quality checkpoints across factories.

- Strengthen CAPA / RCA systems.

- Establish factory-level quality dashboards.

- Improve audit readiness and compliance discipline.

- Strengthen documentation and traceability.

- Introduce structured quality reviews with Factory Heads and Production Heads.

4. Customer / Buyer Quality:

- Strengthen customer and buyer quality-management processes.

- Review customer complaints and establish systematic closure mechanisms.

- Build stronger communication between Quality, Production, Merchandising and Operations.

- Identify recurring quality issues and eliminate systemic causes.

5. People & Capability:

- Assess existing Quality teams across locations.

- Identify capability gaps.

- Coach QA/QC Heads, Managers and Supervisors.

- Establish training priorities for quality personnel and production supervisors.

- Build stronger ownership of quality at the shop-floor level.

Key Success Measures:

The six-month plus mandate is expected to create measurable improvement in:

- Defect levels

- Rework and rejection

- First-pass / right-first-time performance

- Customer complaints

- Audit performance

- CAPA closure

- Process compliance

- Quality ownership by Production

- Cross-factory quality standardisation

The organisation's broader proposed KPI framework includes a target of reducing quality defects by agreed percentage, subject to baseline validation and agreement at commencement of the assignment.

Candidate Profile:

- 20 - 35 years of experience in apparel / garment / textile quality.

- Strong experience in large-scale apparel manufacturing.

- Prior experience as Head Quality / VP Quality / GM Quality / Quality Director / Quality Assurance Head or equivalent.

- Strong understanding of garment construction and manufacturing processes.

- Experience with large-scale factory quality systems.

- Strong exposure to root-cause analysis, CAPA, process control and continuous improvement.

- Experience with international buyers / export quality systems will be an advantage.

- Exposure to rainwear, outerwear, technical apparel, workwear or performance garments will be particularly relevant.

- Strong people-management and cross-functional leadership capability.

- Professionals who have recently retired and are available for an interim assignment are encouraged to apply.

Personal Attributes:

- Strong quality mindset with commercial understanding.

- Hands-on and willing to spend significant time on the shop floor.

- Analytical and data-oriented.

- Strong influencing and stakeholder-management capability.

- Able to challenge existing practices constructively.

- High integrity and independence of judgement.

- Comfortable working directly with the CEO and senior leadership.

Joining:

The selected candidate should be available to join to a maximum of 30 days from selection.