Quality Manager

About Kennametal

With over 85 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace and defense, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency. Learn more at  Follow @Kennametal:
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Quality Manager

New Market, VA

This position will cover job functions for the quality department responsible for compliance to the Quality Management System for the campus as well as the day-to-day activities and development of the quality team members. This includes customer satisfaction (complaints, response time, ePPM) and financial performance of Quality (COPQ).

• Customer Satisfaction – Approve on-time 8D’s to customers after quality events which impact customers. Identify projects for continuous improvement and work with cross-functional team to execute. Job may require frequent contact with customer personnel to align responses and drive customer intimacy.
• Financial Performance of Quality (COPQ) – Utilize MRB process to drive problem solving to prevent recurrence on major issues. Identify projects for continuous improvement and work with cross-functional team to execute.
• Quality Management System – Maintain policies, procedures, control plans, failure catalogs, audits, metrology, et al, in a way that fosters an atmosphere of compliance on campus and continually improves customer satisfaction and quality financial performance.
• Flawless launch & change – Ensures team is engaged so that risks are identified and mitigated ahead of launch for newly developed product or process or product changes on the campus.
• Daily execution – This is a critical leadership role requiring significant hands-on tactical leadership engaged with all levels of the organization in addition to the long-term strategic responsibilities expected of a Quality Manager. The candidate must be prepared to be a fully engaged, working leader.

• Ensures an effective organizational structure and sufficient staffing for the quality department on the campus. Leads the day-to-day activities of the quality team and promotes a culture of quality ownership among all cross-functions on the campus through strategic development and communication.
• Maintain the Quality Management System (ISO 9001) of the site. Engage with regional and global QMS leadership to ensure conformance to business segment & corporate procedures.
• Shares in the overall improvement metrics of the site to ensure quality targets are not sacrificed and a joint effort is made toward resource optimization and utilization.
• Identifies & supports training initiatives for workforce on the campus – in and out of quality department.
• Supports regional and global strategic quality initiatives on the campus.
• Approve and execute (LPA) product & process audits aimed to drive standardization of jobs. The ability to communicate and coach closure of process and inspection non-conformances is required.
• Facilitate on-time response to customer complaints through approving 8D’s generated by a cross-functional team led by a quality engineer. Diagnose top level causes of customer complaints to drive continuous improvement efforts on the campus and project manage with the cross functional team to ensure execution. Personal leadership of high impact customer complaints may be required. Candidate must successfully navigate potential applications issues between the customer & Kennametal engineering/sales orgs.
• Facilitate root cause and corrective action for high impact scrap events coming from the MRB process. This can include events which did not go through the MRB process.
• Approves changes to policies, procedures, control plans, failure catalogs, audits and defined metrology methods to support continuous improvement on the campus.
• Work with cross-functional team to address systemic root causes for top quality costs for the campus. This includes open communication and potential travel to customers and/or other KMT sites to…