Production Supervisor - Press and Weld Cells

Safety

• Maintain a strong safety presence on the production floor.
• Ensure all employees follow plant safety rules, personal protective equipment requirements, lockout/tagout procedures, machine-guarding requirements, and safe work practices.
• Conduct daily pre-shift safety meetings and communicate applicable safety alerts.
• Complete safety observations, layered process audits, housekeeping inspections, and corrective-action follow-up.
• Stop production immediately when unsafe conditions or behaviors are identified.
• Ensure operators are properly trained and authorized before operating welding equipment, presses, cranes, forklifts, robots, or other machinery.
• Investigate incidents, near misses, first-aid cases, and unsafe conditions using structured root-cause analysis.
• Maintain clean and organized work areas through 5S standards.
• Ensure emergency stops, light curtains, guards, interlocks, and other safety devices are functional and never bypassed.
• Cook with EHS and Maintenance to close safety concerns promptly.

Quality

• Ensure all products are manufactured according to customer specifications, work instructions, control plans, quality alerts, and standardized work.
• Verify that first-piece, last-piece, changeover, and in-process inspections are completed and documented.
• Monitor weld quality, dimensional requirements, press-part conditions, visual standards, and critical product characteristics.
• Ensure operators properly use gauges, fixtures, boundary samples, master samples, and error-proofing devices.
• Stop production and contain suspect material when defects or process abnormalities are identified.
• Coordinate containment, sorting, rework, and corrective actions with the Quality team.
• Support root-cause analysis using 5 Why, Fishbone, 8D, Pareto, and other problem-solving methods.
• Reduce scrap, rework, weld defects, missing components, dimensional issues, and customer complaints.
• Ensure nonconforming material is properly identified, segregated, documented, and controlled.
• Participate in layered process audits, process verification audits, PFMEA reviews, control-plan reviews, and customer-specific quality activities.
• Reinforce a quality-at-the-source culture and employee accountability for defect prevention.

Productivity and Delivery

• Achieve hourly and daily production targets according to the approved production schedule.
• Monitor hourly production, cycle time, downtime, scrap, labor efficiency, changeover performance, and schedule attainment.
• Review production results against established rates and immediately address performance gaps.
• Assign employees according to production requirements, skills, qualifications, and staffing levels.
• Ensure production boards and KPI tracking systems are updated accurately and on time.
• Identify bottlenecks and coordinate recovery plans with Maintenance, Engineering, Quality, Tooling, and Materials.
• Minimize unplanned downtime through rapid escalation and structured response.
• Manage break coverage, absenteeism, overtime, job rotation, and manpower utilization.
• Support continuous-improvement activities focused on throughput, OEE, cycle-time reduction, labor efficiency, scrap reduction, and changeover improvement.
• Ensure materials, containers, racks, labels, components, and finished-product handling are available to support uninterrupted production.
• Maintain effective communication during shift handoffs and document unresolved issues.

Welding Cell Responsibilities

• Supervise robotic and manual MIG welding operations.
• Monitor weld quality, including porosity, burn-through, undercut, cold welds, missed welds, excessive spatter, wire-feed issues, and weld-location concerns.
• Ensure weld parameters, programs, fixtures, clamps, tips, nozzles, liners, wire, gas flow, and consumables are controlled.
• Confirm that operators complete required tip changes, nozzle cleaning, fixture cleaning, and basic autonomous-maintenance tasks.
• Ensure robotic programs and weld parameters are not changed without proper authorization.
• Escalate robot faults, fixture issues, clamp failures, sensor problems, and repeated weld defects.
• Cook with Welding Engineering, Controls, Maintenance, Tooling, and Quality to restore stable production.
• Verify that red-rabbit tests, destructive testing, weld verification, poke-yoke checks, and required quality checks are completed.
• Monitor tooling and fixture conditions to prevent dimensional variation, damaged components, and improper clamping.
• Ensure weld spatter, smoke extraction, fume-control systems, and housekeeping standards are properly managed.

Press-Shop Responsibilities

• Supervise press operations, including progressive, transfer, tandem, or manual press processes as applicable.
• Ensure presses, dies, feeders, straighteners, coils, scrap conveyors, sensors, guards, and material-handling equipment are operated safely.
• Verify die setup, first-off approval, material identification, coil changes, and production changeovers.
• Monitor press-part quality for splits, cracks, wrinkles, burrs, dents, dimensional variation, missing holes, improper forms, and surface defects.
• Cook with die repairs, press maintenance, lubrication concerns, feeder problems, sensor faults, and material-quality issues.
• Ensure die-protection sensors and safety devices are operational and never bypassed.
• Monitor press speed, strokes per minute, downtime, scrap rates, die-change time, and overall equipment effectiveness.
• Ensure scrap is properly collected, weighed, identified, and removed from the production area.
• Support SMED and die-change improvement activities.
• Maintain clear communication with Tooling, Maintenance, Materials, Quality, and Production Control regarding press-shop conditions.

Leadership and Employee Management

• Provide clear daily direction and hold employees accountable for safety, quality, productivity, attendance, and workplace conduct.
• Conduct pre-shift meetings and communicate production priorities, quality concerns, safety issues, and staffing assignments.
• Train, coach, and develop team leaders, operators, press operators, welders, and material handlers.
• Address performance, attendance, behavior, and policy issues consistently and in coordination with Human Resources.
• Promote teamwork, discipline, urgency, and accountability.
• Recognize strong performance and provide timely corrective feedback when standards are not met.
• Support employee involvement, continuous improvement, and problem-solving activities.
• Ensure company policies, work rules, and collective bargaining requirements are followed where applicable.

Administrative Responsibilities

• Complete production reports, downtime records, scrap reports, labor tracking, attendance records, quality documentation, and shift summaries.
• Track and report key operational metrics.
• Participate in daily production meetings, shift handoffs, customer reviews, and improvement meetings.
• Maintain accurate records of production interruptions, corrective actions, and escalation activities.
• Support audits related to IATF 16949, ISO standards, customer-specific requirements, safety, and internal operating systems.
• Ensure required documentation is complete, current, accurate, and available at the point of use.