General Manager - Quality Assurance - FMCG

Job profile:

As the company scales rapidly, it seeks to establish an independent Corporate Quality function responsible for driving product excellence across the complete product lifecycle - from product design to supplier quality, manufacturing, field installation and customer experience.

The Head - Corporate Quality will own and drive the company's overall Quality Strategy across the entire value chain. This position will function as an independent Corporate Quality leader responsible for ensuring consistent quality standards across multiple cross-functional teams.

The incumbent will work closely with R&D, Product Engineering, Procurement, Supplier Development, Manufacturing, Operations and Field Service teams to create a culture of preventive quality rather than reactive problem solving.

The primary objective is to reduce product failures, improve field reliability, strengthen supplier quality, improve customer satisfaction and institutionalize world-class quality systems across the organization.

This role reports directly to the Founders and operates independently from functional departments to ensure objective quality governance.

1. Corporate Quality Leadership:

• Develop and implement the organization's Corporate Quality strategy.
• Establish Quality Governance across all product-related functions.
• Create uniform quality standards across departments.
• Build a culture of Quality First.
• Act as the final authority on product quality decisions.
• Drive Quality Reviews with senior leadership.

2. New Product Development Quality (Design Quality):

• Partner with R&D teams to ensure products are designed for quality, reliability and manufacturability.
• Responsibilities include: Design Verification, Failure Analysis, Product Risk Assessment, Design Change Management and Product Qualification.

3. Supplier Quality Management:

• One of the most critical responsibilities of the role.
• Lead supplier quality initiatives across Supplier Selection, Supplier Qualification, Supplier Audits, Incoming Quality Systems, Vendor Capability Assessment, Corrective Action Management, Ensuring Quality standards, Drive improvement programs with suppliers to reduce incoming defects and improve process capability.

4. Manufacturing and Operations Quality:

• Work with Manufacturing teams to ensure robust production quality systems.
• Drive: Process Quality, Assembly Quality, Process Capability, In-process Quality, End-of-Line Testing, Quality Gates, Defect Prevention, Process Validation, SPC, Lean Quality, Six Sigma methodologies.

5. Product Reliability and Field Quality:

• Establish strong systems to monitor product performance after installation.
• Responsible for Field Failure Analysis, Warranty Analysis, Repeat Failure Reduction, Product Reliability Monitoring, Product Life Cycle Quality, Root Cause Analysis, Corrective and Preventive Actions, Customer Complaint Analysis, Reliability Growth Programs.
• Develop systems to capture field learnings and feed them back into Design, Procurement and Manufacturing teams.

6. Customer Quality:

• Monitor product performance from a customer experience perspective.
• Key deliverables include: Complaint Reduction, Installation Quality, Cosmetic Quality, Customer Satisfaction Improvement, Warranty Cost Reduction, Customer Escalation Management.

7. Quality Systems and Governance:

• Develop and institutionalize enterprise quality systems including: Quality Audits, Quality Manuals SOP Standardization, Process Documentation, Internal Audit Programs, Management Review Systems, Compliance Frameworks, Continuous Improvement Systems.