Product Technical Lead

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Product Technical Lead acts as a key partner across business functions; responsible for ensuring that current product designs meet customer/business expectations while also participating in new product development projects. This role is responsible for clearly understanding the ways our customers interact with our products, required critical product features & benefits and translating those into measurable product characteristics in the Manufacturing Specification. The Product Technical Lead is accountable for balancing manufactured product quality and cost: ensuring product quality consistency, driving defect elimination, and Cost of Non-Quality (CONQ) improvement.

The Product Technical Lead also possesses a fundamental understanding of the manufacturing process.  They are required to have excellent communication skills and be able to speak to all levels of the organization as this position works closely with other technical and manufacturing teams as well as business and operations leaders. Although this role is considered individual contributor, leadership of projects with horizontal leadership will be key to driving initiatives critical to Operations, S&T, and the business.

Reports to: Product Technical Team Leader

Span of Control: Individual Contributor with room to grow

Location: The preferred location of the role is Granville, OH; a hybrid work model is available. Dependent on candidate experience, remote requests may be considered.

 JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

Safer Together (10%)

• Ensures rigorous compliance with safety procedures and OC corporate policies
• Focuses on sustaining a safe work environment for self and coworkers

Customer & Product Focus (60%)

• Identifies, understands, and effectively translates CFFUs into clear, measurable manufacturing and testing specifications.
• Regularly evaluate market environment and performance through customer visits, competitive product audits and comprehensive Product Line Reviews (PLRs)
• Regularly evaluate manufactured product quality performance and drive improvement
• Drive efficient and effective quality complaint and hold tag processing, root cause analysis, and corrective/preventive action execution
• Develops test methods to quantify critical product characteristics
• Enterprise Product Quality Management champion
• Communicate effectively with people at all levels and placement within the organization

Project Leadership (30%)

• Lead product qualification when changes are made to existing products (raw material substitution, new plant/line start, etc.) using Production Readiness Process, including new product qualification.
• Manage project information in VelOCity, our corporate stage-gate project management tool
• Work with Plant/Business Leaders to develop a working knowledge of the financial drivers for each product and participate in development of product strategy for optimization of cost/performance.
• Identify and lead CONQ improvement initiatives within assigned products, including EOL scrap loss, complaints, and Finished Goods loss
• Provide training and knowledge transfer to manufacturing organizations on customer requirements and changes to the specifications
• Communicate effectively with people at all levels and placement within the organization

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• B.S. in Engineering (Mechanical/Chemical/Electrical/Industrial), Chemistry or similar field
• Ability to travel 15-25%. Travel schedule will be determined in advance.

EXPERIENCE:

• Working knowledge of industrial manufacturing processes
• Demonstration of safe work practices
• Leadership (direct or indirect) of interdisciplinary teams to achieve a common goal
• Demonstrated ability to generate new and innovative, customer inspired solutions

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES:

• Effective communicator
• Demonstrated horizontal leadership and project management
• Track record of competitively driving results and modeling resilience
• Willingness to stop any job or task without hesitation to address a safety concern
• Proficient in Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, Minitab, Power BI, and ProFicient
• Able to understand a broad range of technical issues and demonstrates unconventional out-of-the-box thinking in approaches to problem resolution
• Ability to effectively analyze data to drive business decisions
• Self-starter who works with minimal