Director, Quality Assurance

POSITION SUMMARY:

Responsible for establishing a quality assurance system and team within the Superconductors business unit; establish a system that promotes customer satisfaction and that positively impacts the financial performance of American Superconductor.  Champion continuous improvement efforts and defect reduction initiatives to establish an effective Quality Management System (QMS); initiate and implement quality improvement activities as appropriate (e.g., Kaizen, Six Sigma) to raise the performance of the company’s product lines. Educate and train employees as to their impact in the quality management system. Expertise in manufacturing environments, with a focus on finding and fixing root cause of complex systems failures.

RESPONSIBILITIES/DUTIES:

• Develop, implement, manage and integrate a QMS for manufacturing plants.
• Serve as the primary quality control resource for problem identification, resolution, loss reporting and continuous improvement.
• Manage quality control personnel on a day-to-day basis.
• Support concurrent engineering efforts by participating in design development projects representing quality assurance and the customer.
• Design, implement and document procedures for process control, process improvement, testing and inspection.
• Establish and implement metrics (process capability, control charts, measurement quality) for monitoring system effectiveness and to enable managers to make sound product quality decisions
• Perform root-cause analysis and other problem solving activities to identify effective corrective actions and process improvements.
• Establish collection and analysis systems of statistical data to predict trends that will affect improvement of product quality.
• Analyze customers’ product specifications to establish efficient, cost-effective requirements for ease of manufacture and reproducibility.
• Develop quality planning methods for all product lines.
• Develop process certification standards and assist in process certification.
• Monitor vendor performance and establish criteria and rating system for critical vendors.
• Review customer purchase orders, contracts and change requests and ensure that the necessary criteria and provisions are included in quality and process plans.
• Interact with customers to identify opportunities to improve quality and establish feedback with manufacturing and development personnel.
• Oversee calibration and testing programs.
• Report to management on quality issues, trends and losses.
• Review suppliers purchase orders and establish supplier quality requirements.
• Participate in internal and external quality audits.
• Interface with supplier and customer quality representatives concerning problems with quality control and assure that effective corrective action is implemented.
• All other reasonable duties, as assigned.

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE:

• BS/BA in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering or Business Administration
• 10+ years experience in QA systems implementation and management with 5 years as a Corporate Quality Engineer (CQE) or Corporate Quality Manager (CQM) in a medium-size manufacturing environment, preferably in the ceramics, metals or superconductivity industries.
• Candidate must have an engineering background with solid and demonstrated experience in failure analysis.
• Knowledgeable of corrective action techniques including FMEA, FTA, SFA.
• Experience in design/prototype manufacture.
• Six Sigma black-belt certified with a proven track record of business performance improvement.

QUALIFICATIONS/OTHER REQUIREMENTS:

• Broad knowledge of theory and principles of statistics and statistical process control.
• Experience in designing and implementing quality systems.
• Diverse knowledge of inspection and control methods, techniques and documentation.
• Excellent communication skills (written and verbal).
• Strong computer skills including quality control applications, word processing, spreadsheets and databases.
• Thorough understanding of general safety requirements.
• Training in foreign object damage awareness.
• Understanding of Mil Standards.
• Travel ~ 25%

American Superconductor is an Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/D/V