Product Introduction Manager

Confidential Client | Northeast Wisconsin

Position Summary

I’m working with a well-established and rapidly growing custom manufacturing client in Northeast Wisconsin that is adding an NPI Program Manager to its team. This is a newly created opportunity with significant visibility and responsibility as the organization continues to expand its customer base, product portfolio, and manufacturing capabilities.

The NPI Program Manager will serve as the central point of accountability for new product introduction programs from customer award through successful production launch and stabilization
. This person will coordinate cross-functional teams, manage timelines and deliverables, facilitate communication, identify risks, and ensure new products move from concept to production efficiently and successfully.

This is an excellent opportunity for someone who enjoys being the person who keeps complex projects moving
, works across multiple departments, and wants meaningful exposure to customers, senior leadership, engineering, manufacturing, and operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage new product introduction programs from customer award through production launch and stabilization.
• Develop and maintain detailed project schedules, milestones, deliverables, and launch timelines.
• Serve as the primary point of coordination across engineering, manufacturing, quality, purchasing, supply chain, finance, sales, and other internal stakeholders.
• Lead regular cross-functional NPI meetings and ensure action items, owners, and deadlines are clearly established and followed through.
• Create meeting agendas, document minutes, communicate decisions, and maintain project documentation.
• Monitor project progress and proactively identify schedule, cost, quality, resource, and production risks.
• Coordinate customer communication throughout the NPI process and provide timely updates on project status.
• Work closely with engineering and manufacturing teams to ensure products are designed for manufacturability, quality, cost, and production efficiency.
• Coordinate prototype, pre-production, tooling, testing, validation, and production-readiness activities.
• Ensure critical launch requirements are completed prior to production release.
• Track project budgets, tooling requirements, capital needs, and other launch-related costs.
• Facilitate resolution of issues that could impact timing, cost, quality, or customer expectations.
• Develop and maintain project status reports and communicate progress to leadership.
• Support continuous improvement of the company's NPI processes, systems, and documentation.
• Help establish repeatable launch processes, standards, and best practices as the organization continues to grow.
• Travel periodically to customer locations and other facilities as needed.

Cross-Functional Leadership

This position will work extensively across the organization and will regularly interact with:

• Manufacturing
• Operations
• Quality
• Purchasing
• Supply Chain
• Finance
• Customers and external partners

The successful candidate does not necessarily need to be a technical expert in every function. Rather, they need to be an exceptional project leader and communicator who can understand the big picture, ask the right questions, hold people accountable, and keep everyone moving toward the same objective.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, Operations, Project Management, Manufacturing, or a related field preferred.
• 3+ years of experience in program management, project management, NPI, new product development, manufacturing, or a closely related environment.
• Experience managing projects involving multiple departments and competing priorities.
• Experience working within a manufacturing environment strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of…