Senior Supplier Quality Engineer

Responsibilities

• Select suppliers with Vehicle Interiors Engineering, Design, and Strategic Sourcing based on manufacturing capability, capacity, and quality maturity.
• Lead supplier design reviews, industrialization, and production ramp-up, including soft-tooling to hard-tooling transitions.
• Support tooling, foam molds, sewing fixtures, gauges, and process qualifications; witness and approve tooling and process buy-offs.
• Drive APQP and support PPAP through start of production, including dimensional, material, appearance, and performance validation.
• Own craftsmanship and appearance quality for occupant-facing surfaces, including grain, gloss, color and material matching, gap and flush, seams, stitches, and trim fit.
• Establish master and boundary sample processes and ensure compliance with seating safety, flammability, durability, and interior material requirements.
• Assess supplier readiness for vehicle builds and manage production risk ahead of build phases.
• Train suppliers on quality systems and review prototype and production part documentation.
• Lead 8D root-cause and corrective-action efforts and support analysis and disposition of suspect supplier material.
• Monitor supplier quality metrics and use lean and quality tools to improve yield, first-time-through quality, and cycle time.
• Improve supplier assessment, management, part approval, and corrective-action processes.
• Travel domestically and internationally up to 40%, sometimes on short notice.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical, Industrial, Materials, or a related engineering field.
• 8+ years of experience in quality, supplier quality, or manufacturing, ideally in automotive.
• Direct experience with seating and/or interior trim commodities and their supply base.
• Experience launching new products (NPI) and creating or improving quality systems.
• Experience with injection molding, foam-in-place and molded foam, cut-and-sew, lamination and wrapping, stamping and welding, and electromechanical assembly.
• Proficiency with Six Sigma, 8D, Pareto analysis, DOE, fishbone, and Is/Is-Not problem-solving methods.
• Familiarity with process flow diagrams, PFMEA, control plans, SPC, MSA, and process capability studies.

Nice-to-Haves

• Seat safety and regulatory requirements, and seat and trim durability and abuse testing.
• Soft trim materials including leather, textiles, TPO/PVC skins, foams, and adhesives.
• Material and appearance approval processes and CMF alignment with Design.
• Seat comfort and craftsmanship evaluation.
• Seat electronics and mechanisms, including occupant detection sensors, heaters, motors, recliners, and tracks.
• Tooling and fixture validation.
• CQE, ASQ Quality Auditor, or Six Sigma Green/Black Belt certification.