Program Manager

Responsibilities

• Lead the Simultaneous Development Team (SDT) in a professional way to the customer and Adient management.
• Motivate the team to meet commitments to the established timing.
• Build team technically and personally through mentoring and coaching.
• Resolve conflicts between team members, departments and the customer.
• Negotiate with internal and external groups, vendors and the customer.
• Identify the root cause of a problem, develop corrective action and lead team to resolution.
• Potentially lead other Program Managers, Project Managers, or Project Coordinators.
• Experience launching new product, new process, new plant or launches within multiple regions.
• Effective communication, collaboration, and leadership are the hallmark of a PM.
• Simultaneous Development Team (SDT) Management: Act as the central communication point for the SDT to ensure that each SDT member is always aware of their deliverables and timing commitments.
• Trains and coaches the SDT in Adient Product Launch processes to ensure compliance.
• Manages the SDT to meet timing, cost, manufacturing, quality and cost targets.
• Establishes the SDT meeting cadence and monitors attendance to ensure the correct team members are present at each meeting.
• Creates agenda, schedules meetings, keeps the meeting on task and issues minutes.
• Provides team information needed to perform tasks.
• Actively includes key suppliers as a member of the team.
• PMs are highly skilled and experienced at leading effective SDT meetings including the use of collaboration and communication tools.
• Scope Management: Communicate the impact of scope changes to the customer and SDT in a timely manner in terms of cost, timing, product, quality of execution and the impact on the program.
• Publish the SOW and SSOWs and ensure all scope changes are captured in the documents.
• Utilize the PD-3 approval process for internal and customer scope changes.
• Differentiate scope changes from engineering changes.
• Manage the risk of scope changes and keep management informed of change and the effect on the program.
• Ensure that financial performance is protected and enhanced by customer driven scope changes.
• PMs are highly skilled at effectively mitigating the risks of scope changes and proactively managing scope changes with the customer.
• 0-0-100-100-90 Planning: Plan and achieve 0 recordable incidents, 0 rejected parts per million, 100% delivery on-time, 100% of Capital Appropriation Request (CAR) commitments at 90 days post launch.
• Anticipate risk caused by late tasks and changes by developing mitigation strategies.
• Establish a documented implementation plan and containment action for engineering changes at launch.
• Work with suppliers to ensure all necessary resources are in place for launch.
• Provide on-site plant support throughout pre-production builds.
• Follow up on MESO & LMSO deliverables to ensure plant material functions are ready.
• Foster effective working relationship between Plant launch team and the CBU based team.
• Maintains and manages scope changes.
• Bundles late changes into pre-launch and post-launch buckets to keep risk manageable.
• Drives the teams focus on achieving 0-0-100-100-90 launch performance from the onset of the program.
• Financial Roadmap & Financial Reporting: Schedules Finance SDT meeting once a month from Development Start through the Post Launch Gate.
• Maintains a solid financial base to understand how to utilize the SDT to impact financial measures and the relationship between financial measures.
• Ensures the product(s) is(are) designed to meet BOM cost targets by facilitating between engineering and finance.
• PMs have a high degree of business acumen and lead the team in achieving program financial commitments.
• Timing: Ability to create program deliverable timing with customer milestones/deliverables used as the foundation.
• Gate timing developed from a timeline that meets Adient and customer firewalls.
• Ensures the timeline and related timing documents (i.e. prototype schedule, CAD schedule, Parts Matrix, etc.) are consistent.
• Program timeline is utilized in weekly SDT meetings to clearly communicate deliverables and due dates.
• Responsible for on-time Gate exit reviews, regardless of whether the exit can be achieved.
• Creates issues list that is clear and concise with due dates and deliverables.
• PMs are highly skilled at effectively managing all aspects of program timing both internally and with the customer.
• Product: Responsible for leading team to meet Craftsmanship objectives and action planning to address any gaps.
• Audit customer samples for customer satisfaction via Customer Shipping Approval Review.
• Manage CAD schedule, prototype build schedule, and testing schedule and ensure any gaps are addressed to meet the program timeline.
• Audit ED, DV, and PV testing results and manage timing and corrective actions to support the launch.
• Facilitates change management meeting.
• Meets applicable product requirements including specifications, functional expectations and FMVSS requirements.
• Customer Satisfaction: Fosters an effective personal working relationship with appropriate customer contacts.
• Maintains Adient and personal credibility with the customer.
• Recognized by the customer as the key contact for program implementation.
• Mets dates and commitments via customer open issues list which directs the team for prompt responses.
• Communicates with data for scope changes with cost, quality and timing impacts.
• Gains internal consensus on scope changes prior to communicating to the customer.
• Archives and retains key customer correspondence and documents.
• Maintains regular contact with the customer to communicate problems early.
• Does not avoid difficult issues or decisions.
• Understands customer’s organization and procedures in detail.
• Global Management Skills: Can function in a different culture while matching his/her interpersonal style to the culture they are working in.
• Demonstrates awareness, interest and respect for different cultures.

Qualifications

• Experience with complete seat, interiors, or metals preferred.
• Experience 5+ years of related work experience.