Associate AFC Product Manager

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Job Overview

This role develops the skills to lead a product's business strategy by driving cross-functional collaboration, managing the full product lifecycle, and aligning market insights with engineering, pricing, and commercial strategies to optimize performance and customer value.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Learn to be the business leader for a product through collaboration with all cross-functional organizations to achieve specific product outcomes.
  • Be accountable for product price, cost, profitability, market share, competitive analysis, product quality and inventory. 
  • Set and manage clear customer-facing product offerings or options that the organization can commercially promise and deliver.
  • Set list price for product, features, aftermarket parts, and services. 
• Learn to implement strategies to drive new product development, and management of technical features and options.
  • Support the product roadmaps, manage new product development plans, and implement “next model” developments, blending market and business requirements to drive short term business performance and long-term customer satisfaction. 
  • Develop the ability to manage product life cycle strategies to drive the sunrise and sunset of product offerings, features and options in alignment with product roadmaps, proven designs, cost controls and inventory.
  • Drive accountability for development of cross-product platforms, maintenance of technical product configuration options, and consistent use of Komatsu Mining’s business systems and databases. 
• Develop and maintain an understanding of the market dynamics of the product. Use this knowledge to guide requirements, promotional strategies and selling tools for the product.
  • Manage or perform market research involving meetings with customers, sales personnel and other stakeholders to define market needs. Drive the use of sustainable processes for the compilation of information from these external and internal sources globally.
  • Be the central focus for market issues and opportunities for the product, and use this knowledge for the development of clear product requirements and issue resolutions. 
  • Maintain the positive brand image of the product through consistent maintenance of model families, labeling, and prompt problem resolutions globally.
  • Drive development and maintenance of tools and systems to aid in the consistent selling of Komatsu Mining’s product offerings globally. 
• Administer group resources.
  • Develop and maintain the annual budget for this position.
  • Prioritize projects based on resource level, and manage or influence human resources.
  • Direct engineering in developing or maintaining offerings that meet market needs. 

Qualifications/Requirements

• Bachelor of Science Degree, deep business acumen and analytical capability, required.
• Advanced degree(s) in business with strong sales or customer exposure, highly preferred.
• Basic experience managing people and/or major projects in industry, required. 
• 5 years’ experience in mining equipment business, desired.
• Participation in implementing Lean Engineering principles, desired.
• Participation in effective Change Management implementation, highly desired. 
• Effective understanding of product marketing principles, desired.
• Experience in cross-functional assignment(s), desired.
• Certifications or demonstrated project management, required.
• Professional registration and/or membership in committees and/or technical societies, beneficial. 

Predominant Tasks

1. Maintain communication with the Product Development Council (PDC) to review the status and future of the product.

2. Establish list prices for product, options, and parts. Set fees for engineering specials.

3. Lead Komatsu Mining configurator maintenance on a quarterly basis.

4. Establish cut to list limits for sales team.

5. Create “go to market” strategies for product, components, and parts. Chair review of parts pricing.

6. Create and drive cost reduction targets for product.

7. Identify need for new major product initiatives to senior management for further consideration, such as Entry Development (ED) or Automation.

8. Ensure globalization of product as required.

9. Develop market strategies for new product releases.

10. Utilize marketing for market research, publications, advertising, and brochures.

11. Produce product training for sales and other functional areas.

12. Develop leadership talent.

13. Chart critical mean time to failure data.

14. Evaluate