Quality Engineering Manager

POSITION DESCRIPTION

JOB TITLE: QUALITY ENGINEERING MANAGER

LOCATION: ERIE, PA

PRIMARY FUNCTION:

The Quality Engineering Manager will maintain the company’s focus built around high-quality driven products. As KAVX’s Quality Engineering Manager will be responsible to lead the company’s quality throughout the product development and manufacturing lifecycles, maintain and derive quality driven metrics that drives the company forward, and participate in and lead continuous productivity through process improvement efforts.

We are looking for a passionate and collaborative professional that can lead through their personality traits. This is a hands-on management role responsible for guiding the quality team to resolve issues in manufacturing as well as ensuring all products meet our high-quality standards. In this role, you will have the opportunity to provide baseline quality metrics, recommend and develop continuous process improvement initiatives, while maintaining the organization’s Quality Management Systems compliance to AS9100.

The Quality Engineering Manager will work directly with customers, employees, and external suppliers to qualify processes, monitor quality performance, and develop product requirements. Develop and direct quality assurance procedures so that a company’s products meet internal and external standards before shipment to customers. You will work in a variety of areas ranging from manufacturing to business activities, play a vital role in establishing processes and standards, and ensure that the organization adheres to these guidelines.

REPORTS TO: OPERATIONS MANAGER

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Guide KAVX’s Quality team, providing direction and support on failure investigation, root cause identification, FAI, incoming inspection, and continuous improvement activities.

• Interface with customers to understand their quality needs, then propose and drive the team to execute projects to address those needs.

• Create, analyze, present, and address KPIs for CAPAs, SCARs, NCMRs, warranty failures, and escapes.

• Investigate and identify failure root cause and work with Manufacturing and Product Engineering teams to drive a response.

• Collaborate with the R&D team to ensure new product designs meet customer requirements and KAVX’s quality standards.

• Interface with suppliers to ensure continued quality or provide guidance when quality standards are not met.

• Manage outside consultants and sub-contractors where technical expertise does not exist in-house.
• Lead and facilitate Quality Improvement and Kaizen events.

• Establish and enact quality assurance procedures and methodologies within the Quality Management System (QMS) throughout the manufacturing, development and business processes.

• Assess current production and inspection systems and develop new solutions to enhance quality control, frequently working with production managers and other leaders to enact and improve these procedures.

• Direct and coordinate quality assurance and quality control personnel, instructing them on new or revised processes, policies, procedures and systems and providing oversight during the QA process.

• Develop and report recurring quality issues, audit findings, performance metrics of the business to all Management.

• Ensure and maintain detailed records of quality assurance activities and issues.

• Enhance performance by analyzing and assessing quality control and assurance data, find patterns and areas for improvements based on QA data over time and utilize these reports to improve processes and performance.

• Lead overall production and manufacturing efficiency by identifying opportunities to enhance productivity, implementing cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing solutions both in quality assurance procedures and production activities as a whole.

• Own and manage MRB (Material Review Board)/FRB (Failure Review Board) activities and RCCA (Root Cause and Corrective Action) process.

• Collaborate and report out to customers on issues, corrective actions, project lifecycle requirements, FAI (First Article Inspections), and source inspections.

SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Requires BS in Mechanical, Electrical, Quality, Industrial engineering, and 10 years of experience.

• Ability and desire to actively engage with project work where required to meet goals.

• Working knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering to interact with subject matter experts on a complex electro-mechanical product.

• Experience with failure investigation, CAPA, 8D, and reliability studies.
• Strong interpersonal skills to interact with internal and external stakeholders to provide and receive constructive criticism about product quality issues.

• Solid foundation of quality assurance process, policies, procedures and methodologies.

• Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

• Robust skills in numerical and statistical analysis, and extensive knowledge with process improvement and enhancement.

• Ability to direct, oversees and leads personnel, and is a great team player through coordination, and motivational leadership.

• Per ITAR Compliance must be a U.S. Citizen.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master of Science in Mechanical, Electrical, Quality, Industrial engineering, or other relevant disciplines.

• Experience in the Semiconductor industry.

• Experience with any/all: diode lasers, optics, opto-mechanical systems, optical metrology, Peltier modules, heat transfer, imaging systems, power electronics.

• Advanced understanding of the design and/or root cause identification of electro-mechanical systems.
• Experience with programming languages for data collection and analysis.