Plant Quality Manager

About the role

The Plant Quality Manager is a critical operations leader responsible for owning plant quality end-to-end — strategy, execution, and results. This role leads all aspects of quality management within an EV battery manufacturing facility, ensuring products meet internal specifications, customer requirements, and applicable regulatory and safety standards.

Responsibilities

• Own the plant quality strategy — including its design, execution effectiveness, and measurable outcomes

• Define, communicate, and align the organization to quality standards at every level of the operation

• Connect quality metrics directly to plant production goals and customer impact

• Anticipate quality risks before they become customer issues; lead preventive quality, not just reactive fixes

• Treat internal defects with the same urgency as if the customer had already received them

• Review warranty data, customer complaints, and audit feedback regularly; drive systemic corrective action

• Align supervisors and leads to the quality strategy — ensuring teams understand how their daily work impacts overall quality outcomes

• Celebrate quality wins and reinforce expectations consistently across the organization

• End-to-end ownership of incoming inspection including criteria definition in partnership with Engineering and Supply Chain

• Quick Response Quality Control (QRQC)

• Establish, own, and continuously improve the plant QRQC process as a foundational function to protect production

• Review and document all issues raised by the line or identified by Quality Technicians every shift

• Identify duplicate issues, repeat failures, safety-critical items, and training-related defects

• Issue quality alerts with urgency — operators must receive timely, clear feedback to prevent recurrence

• Ensure neighbor checks are in place and designed to prevent known failure modes

• Participate in morning stand-ups to review issues with operators and cross-functional teams

• Ensure QRQC findings drive root cause analysis and effective corrective actions — not just containment

• Escalate immediately when resources or cross-functional support are needed to drive resolution

• KPI Management & Data-Driven Decision Making

• Define and own plant quality KPIs including First Pass Yield (FPY), scrap rate, and QRQC audit findings

• Capture quality metrics in real time; structure data to enable trend analysis, Pareto review, root cause identification, and corrective action tracking

• Review performance daily and weekly; adjust actions proactively based on data trends

• Personally sponsor and lead major corrective actions; ensure 8D and 5-Why analyses are thorough — not surface level

• Verify effectiveness checks are completed and improvements are sustained over time

• Standardize proven improvements across all lines to prevent recurrence

• Lead continuous improvement initiatives that simplify processes and reduce burden on the quality team

• Break larger improvement initiatives into achievable milestones; drive forward quickly without waiting for a perfect solution

• Establish and enforce standard work for all quality team functions — including expected task durations, shift responsibilities, and daily targets

• Ensure team members have clear visibility to the production schedule and understand daily and weekly targets

• Ensure standard work is executed at 100%; track and report team performance against standard

• Define escalation paths for when standard work cannot be completed due to resource, material, or process constraints

• Communication & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Proactively push quality data to the organization without being prompted, including:

• Repeat QRQC findings

• Quality alerts and containment status

• Environmental monitoring data (e.g., humidity) with documented findings and escalation paths

• Floor testing data trends and recommendations

• Lead discussions that are action-oriented, forward-looking, and centered on ownership and measurable results

• Escalate effectively when cross-functional support — from Engineering, Supply Chain, or Operations — is needed and is not forthcoming

• Partner with Engineering on quality-by-design and supplier quality development

• Serve as the primary quality interface for customer audits, customer complaints, and external quality reviews

Performance Expectations

• FPY, scrap rate and QRQC audit findings trending positively on a defined cadence

• Zero open corrective actions aging beyond defined thresholds without documented escalation and owner accountability

• Weekly quality reports delivered consistently and on time with accurate, real-time data

• QRQC process functioning daily with documented issue review, quality alert issuance, and line communication

• Team members can articulate their daily goals, standard work responsibilities, and how their work connects to plant quality outcomes

• Quality alerts are proactively generated by the quality team — not reactively requested by operations or leadership

• Monthly quality review presented with full command of data, trends, open actions, and forward-looking strategy

• Cross-functional partners describe quality communication as timely, data-driven, clear, and solution-oriented