Quality Manager

Position Location: Erie, PA


Manager: Plant Manager


Role Level: Manager of People


Manager Once Removed: Director of Manufacturing


Purpose of Role:


The Quality Manager oversees and continuously improves the plant's quality system and performance so that customer requirements for products and services are consistently delivered. They communicate quality requirements and verify they are understood and met, improve quality metrics, and reduce process & product variation. Effectively resolve and prevent recurrence of customer related quality issues and manages a team of plant quality technicians.


Areas of Accountability:

Verify quality requirements are communicated, understood and achieved

• Communicate all quality requirements to plant personnel. Verify effective training so that requirements are understood.
• Achieve, verify and improve compliance with all customer quality requirements, Rehrig quality standards and quality processes.
• Partner with National Quality Engineering (NQE) to implement standards where needed to ensure quality requirements are met.
• When requirements are not achievable, promptly escalate to NQE and NPD teams and facilitate deviation adoption.
• Manage external certifications (where applicable) and compliance activities to maintain and strengthen certification status.

Manage and continuously improve quality metrics; reduce process & product variation

• Lead plant team to achieve internal quality metrics (NCP, scrap, % TL defective, case closure timing, etc).
• Establish and document an improvement plan to improve internal quality metrics year-over-year.
• Deliver standard quality reports on-time, on-quality (NCP, Quality Scorecard, Case related VCs, internal quality actions etc.).
• Measure product/process variation with SPC; Partner with engineering to identify and eliminate special causes and improve Cpk.

Lead quality activities during new product introduction

• Train plant personnel on new product quality requirements in advance of production start (standards, measurements, tests etc.)
• Support validation activities including process capability assessments, GR & R, materials and product testing and process trials.
• Establish ongoing compliance to documented process and product requirements developed during production startup.
• Manage on-time completion of plant's pending actions from NPI activity.

Effectively and efficiently resolve and prevent recurrence of quality issues

• Lead plant team through containment, root-cause analysis & corrective actions for product quality issues with strong sense of urgency. Manage communication with Rehrig cross-functional partners and customer(s) where needed; Manage process according to customer and Rehrig requirements.
• Verify corrective actions are fully effective at preventing recurrence and completely implemented on-time; Perform or oversee post-implementation audits that effectively assess implementation and address gaps.

Manage and develop the local quality team

• Establish and oversee execution of key accountabilities; Provide necessary training and development opportunities; Manage work schedules to achieve business continuity and work-life balance.
• Establish and verify standard work is completed to deliver plant goals.

Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Bachelor's Degree in science or engineering preferred, not required.
• 5+ years of Quality Management/Control Experience (ideally in plastic injection molding).
• Direct experience in Plastic Injection Molding.
• Ability to manage a team of 6-10 quality techs.
• Direct experience with validation, problem solving, and risk tools and processes (examples: SPC, DMAIC, APQP, PPAP, FMEA, DOE, Flow Charting, Six Sigma).
• Develop and implement processes from ground up.
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams and departments.