Group Quality Assurance Manager

Composition Brands is an independent residential kitchen and outdoor living company with a portfolio of premium and ultra-luxury brands including Viking, AGA, Rangemaster, La Cornue, Lynx, and U-Line. With operations across North America and Europe, the company is focused on long-term brand stewardship, thoughtful design, and scalable growth. To learn more, visit www.compositionbrands.com.

Role Summary:

The Group Quality Manager leads the end-to-end global quality strategy across all appliance platforms, manufacturing sites, suppliers, and contract manufacturing partners. This role ensures product safety, regulatory compliance, reliability, and a consistent premium customer experience while reducing warranty costs and protecting brand reputation in high-volume, long-life products.

Serving as the global leader for appliance quality strategy, this position oversees mechanical, electrical, electronic, thermal, and software-related quality throughout the full product lifecycle - from concept development through field performance - across refrigeration, cooking, ventilation, and dishwashing product categories.

This role reports directly to the President and is based in the Atlanta, GA area, with approximately 30–50% travel to domestic and international manufacturing sites, suppliers, and contract manufacturing partners.

Responsibilities:

Quality Strategy & Governance

• Define and deploy a global quality strategy for major appliances aligned with brand, safety, cost, and reliability objectives.
• Establish standardized quality policies, procedures, and KPIs across all regions and platforms.
• Act as executive escalation owner for product safety incidents, regulatory actions, recalls, and field campaigns.
• Lead management reviews and risk assessments at executive level.

Quality Management Systems & Regulatory Compliance

• Own and govern the group QMS aligned appliance-specific requirements.
• Ensure compliance with UL, CSA, IEC, CE, NOM, DOE energy efficiency, EPA refrigerant regulations, and regional safety standards.
• Lead internal, external, customer, and certification audits, as needed.
• Ensure effective CAPA systems and sustained corrective actions.

Product Development & Design Quality

• Partner with R&D to embed design-for-quality, design-for-reliability, and design-for-compliance.
• Govern DFMEA, DVP&R, reliability testing, HALT/HASS, and validation plans.
• Ensure robust design transfer and quality gates from concept through SOP.
• Approve product and engineering changes impacting safety, performance, or compliance.

Manufacturing & Process Quality

• Standardize quality processes across major appliance assembly lines, including:
• Critical-to-safety and critical-to-quality characteristics
• SPC and process capability for key operations
• Functional, safety, and end-of-line testing
• Drive defect prevention through error-proofing, in-line controls, and layered process audits.
• Support new factory launches, line transfers, and capacity expansions.

Supplier & Component Quality

• Define supplier quality standards for critical major appliance components including compressors, sealed systems, gas components, heaters, motors, PCBs, wiring harnesses, insulation, coatings, and structural parts.
• Oversee supplier qualification, audits, and ongoing performance.
• Partner with Sourcing to mitigate supply risk and manage supplier change control.
• Lead resolution of high-risk supplier quality issues.

Customer Quality, Field Performance & Warranty

• Own customer quality metrics including warranty claims, field failures, service call rates, and repeat repairs.
• Partner with Service, Field Operations, and Retail partners to analyze failure trends.
• Lead structured root cause analysis and corrective actions for systemic issues.
• Drive continuous reduction of warranty cost and field campaigns.

Cost of Poor Quality & Continuous Improvement

• Establish and manage Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) across plants and suppliers.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives to reduce scrap, rework, returns, and warranty expense.
• Deploy Lean Six Sigma and reliability engineering methodologies.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, or related)
• 12 years of quality leadership in major appliance or durable consumer goods manufacturing
• Strong knowledge of regulations and certification processes
• Proven success reducing warranty and field failure costs.
• Ability to lead global, cross-functional teams.
• Proven ability to influence, manage teams, and deliver change.
• New product development and release readiness experience.
• Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent preferred.
• Experience leading recalls, field campaigns, or regulatory investigations preferred.
• Experience in global manufacturing and sourcing environments preferred.
• Experience in lean transformation and development of engaged workforce culture preferred.
• Reliability testing experience preferred.
• Experience in sheet metal fabrication, paint, welding, final assembly preferred.

Composition Brands is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EOE/M/F/Vets/Disabled) employer and welcomes all qualified applicants.