Quality Assurance Manager - Water

Responsibilities & duties

- Formulate quality systems for incoming, process and finished goods quality assurance and ensure adherence in the various water factories in India and abroad.

- Study the trends as given by the data above and taken preventive and corrective actions appropriately

- Coordinate with R&D for implementation of any changes in the product and the processes.

- Coordinate between R&D, manufacturing and service for new product launches by transferring technical learning’s to sales and service team by training and workshops.

- Coordinate with Sales & IT teams for field data on the product failures, collate and inform the relevant people like the suppliers, production units, service etc to ensure corrective and preventive actions at various locations like the suppliers, factories and field

- Support global rollout of company by completing quality agreements with various sourcing countries and calibrating the country contacts on acceptance criteria for handling company

- Conduct quality audits of 3P units/factories/suppliers and support factories in implementing corrective and preventive actions for the same. Support implementation of ISO & Unilever G10 quality requirements

- Assess, improve, approve and establish company specific quality systems and procedures in new suppliers (for device manufacturing, for GKK manufacturing and for bought out parts)

- Participate in the product development process by way of giving technical inputs like FMEA, DFM, Quality planning etc

- Accountable for the end product quality to the customer

Key Challenges for Quality Assurance

- Rapid Innovation rollout: Many new products in a short period of time. This leads to quick and precise quality planning for the new products for the incoming BPOs, process quality control in the manufacturing units and FG. Introduction of new technologies like UV, UF, heating, cooling etc leads to learning new technologies and sciences like refrigeration, heaters membranes tech etc

- New Country Rollouts: New counties and new geographies in a short period of time- New countries pose unique challenges like varying water quality and environment in which the purifiers can behave differently. This has to be studied and the appropriate changes to be done in the products. Also during the launch phase, the local team will have to be trained in the product and the quality aspects of the product. Also on the continuing basis, the consumer data will have to be collected and analysed for performance. This position also coordinates with R&D and CRM to take corrective action on ground in the various countries. With increasing number of countries this becomes critical for the success of the business.

- Innovation Development: This position participates in the new product development process, giving inputs at the various stages of product development like FMEA, pilot

- With the increasing number of manufacturing sites both in India and outside, it becomes imperative that this position takes a larger and expanded role in making the new sites complaint to the UL water quality standards and the adherence. Training the new teams and also auditing becomes critical for the quality of the product and processes

Key resources to be manages under positions authority

- Quality Officers in each manufacturing sites (both India/Abroad)

- Quality systems (eg: Company Quality standards, ISO systems)

- Technical Efficiency

- Regional Costs

- Consumer Complaint rates (factory failures & reliability issues)

Problem Solving

- Put systems to have consistent and uniform quality across all the production units

- Water manufacturing has diverse manufacturing processes like molding, welding, assembly

- Collate information from the field and immediately take actions for correcting the issues in the manufacturing sites

- Predict the likely failures in the process and product and take appropriate actions

Change

- New improved processes to be coordinated which can improve the quality of products

- New systems,training to people which will increase the technical efficiency &reduce rejections

Task Horizon

- 6 months

Relationships to be managed

- Lateral Contacts - External Contacts

- Production/Unit Managers - QA/manufacturing counterparts in 3rd party manufacturing unit Product Development Managers

- Product Development Managers - Bought out parts suppliers

- UL supply chain team in other countries - Sales/Service 3rd parties (KSPs)

- Commercial managers - QA/manufacturing counterparts in 3rd party manufacturing unit Product Development Managers

- Sales team - Bought out parts suppliers

- CRM teams in India and company rollout countries -

- Quality teams in company rollout countries -

- Commercial managers -

Work Experience & Skills

Essential - Desirable

- Engineering Degree

- Experience in quality function for at least 5 years

- Exposure to SPC/TQM

- Good Communication and presentation skills

- Preferably from Home appliances/Auto industries e.g. Experience working within a manufacturing environment

- 6 sigma - black belt would be an added advantage