NPI Manager

NPI Manager

NPI Manager responsible for leading New Product Introduction (NPI) activities, working closely with Project Lifecycle Management, Vehicle Integration, Design Engineering, Logistics, Quality, Manufacturing, and other cross-functional teams to ensure the seamless integration of new products and engineering changes into production. This role ensures that introductions are executed without disrupting production schedules or compromising vehicle quality, while verifying that all required approvals, validations, and readiness criteria are completed prior to implementation.

You Will:

• Manage a team of NPI engineers to drive Engineering Change Requests (ECRs) from evaluation to execution and deployment at plant shops level. This includes but is not limited to engineering changes affecting a part used in the manufacturing process.
• Drive NPI activities in new programs such as: Part readiness and approval, Manufacturing processes and systems readiness ensuring changes affected by new parts are smoothly executed.
• Ensure proper Quality approvals and validations are completed prior to implementation.
• Timely escalation for proper correction of critical items that represent a risk to an existing program (current production line) and/or new program or to current production.
• Participate in Engineering Change Request meetings to understand the scope of changes and determine assessment criteria based on the nature of approved changes.
• Coordinate and ensure effectiveness of ECR for new parts trials, ensure proper documentation and disciplined execution.
• Gain holistic knowledge of the product, production processes, and manufacturing technologies to understand and mitigate risks, as well as to identify optimization and improvement opportunities.
• Work with cross-functional teams to understand the critical actions necessary for successful introduction of new features, capabilities, and products, and ensure those needs will be met ahead of deployment with each stakeholder.
• Maintain and communicate project timelines and coordinate NPI and project related plant activities.
• Coordinate and manage all vehicle assembly material cut-over activity.
• Direct timely disposition (scrap / return-to-vendor / consume/ rework) of material in Quality and Cost-effective ways and following a proactive approach anticipating changes, constraints and challenges.
• Continuously improve NPI processes and systems to ensure effectivity and proper planning and cost effectiveness.

Desired Candidate Profile

• Strong knowledge of MS Office tools (MS-Project, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook).
• Working knowledge of change-management and manufacturing systems - PLM (3DX/Delmia), ERP (SAP), Manufacturing Execution Systems, and Jira.
• Creative, energetic, self-motivated, and highly organized.
• Ability to work in fast-paced and changing environment and scalable organization.
• Strong written and verbal skills as well as organizational.
• Presentation and communication skills are a must.
• Ability to coach and train people at different levels of the manufacturing organization.
• Bachelor's in engineering industrial/quality/manufacturing required, master's degree preferred.
• Experience in NPI role is a must.
• 10+ years of experience in an automotive manufacturing organization (OEM) is a must.
• 4+ years of experience with Greenfield OEM is a strong plus.
• Experience and knowledge of product design and engineering change management is required.
• Ability to travel up to 10% of the time.