Director of Quality

POSITION SUMMARY

The Quality Director serves as the senior quality leader across Catoosa's sites, providing strategic and operational leadership for all aspects of quality, including quality systems, compliance, customer quality, supplier quality, manufacturing quality, and continuous improvement. As a member of the Site Leadership Team, this role is accountable for driving quality performance, customer satisfaction, operational excellence, and risk mitigation across the full Catoosa operation.

Working within a matrixed environment, the Quality Director partners closely with Operations, Engineering, Supply Chain, Commercial, and Corporate Quality leaders to strengthen quality capabilities, improve business performance, and ensure alignment with enterprise standards and customer expectations. The role maintains a visible, hands-on presence across the plant floor and shifts, quickly identifies priorities, translates them into measurable results, develops organizational capability, and fosters a culture of quality and accountability.

RESPONSIBILITIES & DUTIES

Strategic Quality Leadership

· Develop and execute the quality strategy across Catoosa's sites and business units, aligned with business objectives, customer expectations, and corporate quality standards.

· Serve as a trusted advisor to site and business leadership on quality risks, opportunities, and performance improvement initiatives.

· Lead the consistent deployment of quality objectives, performance metrics, and management systems across Catoosa's sites, business units, and shifts.

· Foster a culture where quality, safety, operational excellence, and customer satisfaction are integrated into daily decision-making.

Quality Management Systems & Compliance

· Ensure the effectiveness and continuous improvement of the Quality Management System (QMS) across Catoosa's sites and business units.

· Maintain compliance with applicable industry standards, customer requirements, regulatory requirements, and internal policies.

· Lead internal and external audits, certifications, and regulatory inspections.

· Establish robust governance processes to identify, mitigate, and prevent quality-related risks.

Customer Quality & Business Partnership

· Serve as the escalation point for customer quality concerns.

· Build strong relationships with key customers to strengthen confidence, reputation, and long-term partnerships.

· Lead resolution of customer issues utilizing structured problem-solving methodologies and effective corrective actions.

· Drive improvement in customer satisfaction, warranty performance, complaint resolution, and quality-related business metrics.

Operational Quality Excellence

· Maintain a visible, hands-on plant-floor presence and partner with Operations leadership across shifts to improve process capability, product quality, and manufacturing performance.

· Drive root cause analysis and corrective action processes to address systemic quality issues.

Own quality governance for containment and control of nonconforming material, including segregation, traceability, review, disposition, and verification of corrective actions.

Establish and enforce clear product-release requirements and authorization controls to ensure only conforming product is released to customers or downstream operations.

· Establish and sustain effective in-process quality controls across shifts, with clear standards, ownership, escalation, and verification to prevent defects and reduce variation.

· Promote the use of data, analytics, and leading quality indicators to improve decision-making and risk management.

Supplier Quality & Supply Chain Collaboration

· Provide leadership for supplier quality management and supplier development activities.

· Partner with Supply Chain and Procurement to ensure supplier performance meets quality and business expectations.

· Lead supplier quality improvement efforts to reduce defects, nonconformances, and customer-impacting issues.

· Establish risk-based processes for supplier qualification, monitoring, and performance management.

Talent Development & Organizational Leadership

· Lead, coach, and develop the site's quality organization to ensure strong technical and leadership capability.

· Build succession plans and organizational capability to support future business needs.

· Establish a high-performance culture focused on accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

· Attract, retain, and develop top quality talent across the site.

Continuous Improvement

· Champion Lean, Six Sigma, and structured problem-solving methodologies across the site.

· Drive projects focused on improving quality performance, operational effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and cost of poor quality.

· Partner across functions to identify opportunities for process simplification, standardization, and waste reduction.

· Lead initiatives that improve first-pass yield, product reliability, and overall operational performance.

OTHER RESPONSIBILITIES

· To ensure Kelvion’s Standard of Excellence, which includes quality, is incorporated into every product we produce.

· Follow all company policies and procedures, including but not limited to Global Code of Business Principles, Code of Ethics and Business Conduct, Vision and Values, Operational Framework

REQUIREMENTS (KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES)

· Demonstrated ability to lead quality organizations within large-scale manufacturing environments.

· Strong business acumen and ability to balance quality, customer, operational, and financial objectives.

· Executive presence with the ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional teams.

· Proven ability to drive organizational and cultural change.

· Deep knowledge of quality management systems, auditing standards, regulatory requirements, and continuous improvement methodologies.

· Strong customer-facing experience with the ability to manage executive-level customer relationships.

· Expertise in root cause analysis, corrective action systems, risk management, and quality improvement tools.

· Experience leading APQP, PFMEA, Control Plans, SPC, capability studies, and advanced quality methodologies.

· Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to translate data into actionable business decisions.

Demonstrated ability to rapidly assess complex quality conditions, identify the highest-impact priorities, and translate them into disciplined actions and measurable results.

· Excellent communication, leadership, coaching, and team development skills.

· Ability to lead through influence and work effectively across all levels of the organization.

· Ability to work in a fast-paced environment and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

· Bachelor's Degree in Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Industrial Engineering, or related discipline. Advanced degree preferred.

· Minimum 10 years of progressive quality leadership experience in a manufacturing environment.

· Minimum 5 years leading managers, engineers, and multi-level quality organizations.

· Demonstrated success leading quality functions across multiple sites or business units within a large, complex manufacturing operation.

· Experience supporting operations exceeding $500 million in annual revenue; experience within $1 billion plus operations strongly preferred.

· Proven track record of personally leading significant, sustained quality improvement in a complex manufacturing operation, with measurable gains in customer satisfaction, quality performance, operational effectiveness, and cost of quality.

· Experience as a member of a plant leadership team or senior business leadership team.

· ASQ Certified Quality Engineer (CQE), Certified Quality Auditor (CQA), Six Sigma certification, or equivalent professional certification preferred.

· Experience leading certification audits, customer audits, and regulatory compliance activities.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand; reach with hands, arms, and shoulders. The employee is occasionally required to walk; sit; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl; and talk and hear. The employee occasionally will be required hand lift and/or move objects up to 50 pounds.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.