Head - Plant Quality

Company Description Job Description Job Description / Area of Responsibility • Enable the plant’s growth from approximately €250 million to €600 million by 2030 by achieving customer quality targets, securing timely APQP/PPAP and quality-gate approvals, ensuring launch readiness, and maintaining stable serial-production quality and delivery performance. • Develop and execute a multi-year plant quality strategy aligned with the 2030 growth plan. Translate business objectives into departmental targets, resources, competencies, technology investments, audit plans, and budgets. • Maintain the Quality Management System and required automotive certifications, and report performance and risks to plant and business leadership. • Drive profitability by reducing scrap, rework, process rejection, sorting, premium freight, warranty, and customer-complaint costs. • Establish measurable cost-of-poor-quality targets, robust root-cause analysis, effective corrective and preventive actions, and continuous improvement across the plant. • Lead quality planning and industrialization for new products, customers, production lines, transfers, and technologies. • Ensure robust APQP, design and process risk analysis, control plans, measurement concepts, capability validation, traceability, safe-launch controls, and release criteria for complex safety-critical mechatronic products. • Define, implement, and continuously improve plant-wide quality assurance for incoming material, mechanical manufacturing and assembly, electric-motor processes, electronics/PCBA production, SMT lines, final inspection, and product release. Ensure effective process controls, equipment and measurement-system capability, soldering and assembly quality, traceability, change control, layered process audits, product audits, quality gates, error-proofing, and rapid containment of deviations. Drive preventive quality and zero-defect thinking with Production, Engineering, Maintenance, Supply Chain, and R&D. • Act as the senior plant quality representative to customers, certification bodies, suppliers, central Quality, and global locations. Build strong partnerships with Plant Management, Production, Engineering, R&D, Purchasing/Supplier Quality, Supply Chain, Sales, Project Management, Maintenance, EHS, and HR. Lead customer escalations, audits, quality reviews, and cross-functional recovery plans. • Lead, coach, and develop the Quality organization. Define roles, objectives, succession plans, and competency matrices; close capability gaps in safety-critical product quality, electronics and SMT process quality, mechanical and motor technologies, auditing, data analysis, and structured problem-solving. Develop future leaders and ensure disciplined performance management. • Ensure compliance with customer-specific, statutory, regulatory, product-safety, environmental, and Quality Management System requirements. Support responsible material and process controls, safe handling of electronic manufacturing materials, audit readiness, documented product conformity, and timely escalation of product-safety or compliance risks. • Lead containment and recovery for critical quality incidents, customer line stops, product-safety concerns, major audit findings, and field issues. Provide fact-based risk assessments and timely executive communication, coordinate cross-functional task forces, verify sustainable corrective actions, and perform other strategic assignments from Plant or Business leadership. Qualifications • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, Mechatronics, Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, or a comparable discipline. • Minimum 15 years of progressive quality experience in automotive or another highly regulated, safety-critical manufacturing environment, including at least 8 years in senior quality leadership and significant plant-level responsibility. Proven exposure to high-volume mechatronic products integrating mechanical, electronic, motor, and embedded technologies. • Lead-auditor qualification for IATF 16949 / VDA 6.3 preferred. • Six Sigma Black Belt or equivalent structured problem-solving certification desirable. • Demonstrated leadership of major product and process launches, industrialization, capacity expansion, production transfers, and quality turnarounds. Hands-on experience establishing or scaling electronics/PCBA and SMT quality controls, safe-launch governance, traceability, audits, and customer approvals. • Proven leadership of a multidisciplinary Quality organization of comparable scale, including managers and technical specialists. Experience setting departmental targets, managing budgets and resources, developing successors, and leading cross-functional teams through customer or product-safety crises. • Experience working with global customers, suppliers, certification bodies, central functions, and international manufacturing or R&D locations. Able to communicate and influence effectively across cultures, functions, and seniority levels. Additional Information • Automotive Quality Management Systems: IATF 16949, VDA 6.3, internal and customer-specific requirements • Quality leadership for highly safety-critical mechatronic products and high-volume manufacturing • Advanced quality methods: APQP, PPAP, FMEA, control plans, SPC, MSA, capability studies, 8D and root-cause analysis • Electronics and SMT manufacturing quality: PCBA process controls, soldering, inspection, testing, traceability and defect prevention • Mechanical, electromechanical and electric-motor manufacturing technologies, assembly processes, testing and metrology • Customer quality management, escalation handling, audits, product-safety communication and field-issue resolution • Supplier quality management, incoming quality, supplier development and change control • Quality strategy, target deployment, cost-of-poor-quality management, budgeting and performance reporting • Leadership of large, multidisciplinary Quality teams; organization design, coaching and succession planning • Quality data analytics, digital quality systems, laboratory/inspection strategy and measurement-system governance • Cross-functional stakeholder management and clear executive communication in complex or crisis situations • Professional proficiency in English; Hindi or relevant local language preferred Ready to take your career to the next level? 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