Vice President, Quality

20600 Emerald Parkway, Cleveland, Ohio 44135 United States of America

Since 1916, Oatey has provided reliable, high-quality products for the residential and commercial plumbing industries, with a commitment to delivering quality, building trust and improving lives. Today, Oatey operates a comprehensive manufacturing and distribution network comprised of industry leading family of companies:
Oatey, Cherne, Keeney, Quick Drain, Hercules, Dearborn, Oatey Canada, William H. Harvey, Masters, Contact, Belanger, Lansas, and Durgo. At Oatey, we’re doing big things — and by joining us, you’ll have the chance to do big things too. You can build a strong career in an innovative, inclusive, high-performance environment, with the confidence that your company cares — about you, our customers and our world.

Ready to make an impact in a place where you matter?

The Vice President, Quality is the senior leader for Oatey’s Corporate Quality management. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, this leader provides strategic direction for corporate quality, quality systems, quality engineering, and serves as the senior quality partner to Operations, Engineering, Product Management, Sourcing, Distribution, Sales and other functions. The role is accountable for strengthening Oatey’s quality management system, improving product and process quality, developing quality talent, driving disciplined problem solving and ensuring reliable quality data and governance.

This position leads through enterprise standards, corporate quality expertise, cross-functional governance and escalation.

• Lead the Quality Management System (QMS), including corporate quality policies, procedures, document-control expectations, audit governance, management review and continuous improvement of the system.
• Represent Quality in strategic initiatives, product decisions, major issue reviews, supplier transitions and other business changes where quality risk or capability is material.
• Establish practical, consistent corporate standards for nonconformance, quality holds, corrective and preventive action, root-cause analysis, change control, product/process approval, calibration, traceability and quality records.
• Lead the Corporate Quality Engineering team in resolving complex product, manufacturing, supplier, field and customer quality issues using disciplined technical problem solving.
• Provide quality engineering support to Operations, Engineering, Product Management, Sourcing and Distribution for product changes, supplier changes, process changes, validation and launch readiness.
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering to define critical-to-quality requirements, validation expectations, acceptance criteria and quality risks for new products and product changes.
• Partner with Sourcing and Operations on supplier qualification, supplier quality issues, technical acceptance and supplier corrective actions.
• Ensure corrective actions address systemic causes, are verified for effectiveness and are translated into updated standards, controls, training or design/process requirements when appropriate.
• Provide enterprise-level escalation and technical guidance for significant quality events without assuming direct reporting ownership of plant, distribution or sourcing teams.
• Build a culture of constructive challenge, technical rigor, customer focus and partnership in which Quality helps the business prevent problems rather than only inspect or react to them.
• Manage the function’s budget, consultants, quality technology and other resources within the current organizational scope.

• 12+ years of progressive quality, engineering, manufacturing or operations experience, including significant leadership responsibility in a multi-site, product-based organization.
• Strong experience with customer quality, product quality, manufacturing quality, corrective action, audit programs and cross-functional issue resolution.
• Deep knowledge of Quality Management Systems, auditing, management review, document control, nonconformance and corrective action.
• Experience supporting supplier quality, new product…