Quality Manager - Manufacturing

Position Summary

The Quality Manager leads the company quality system across incoming material, production, final inspection, shipping, and customer feedback. This position is accountable for preventing defects, detecting problems near their source, containing nonconforming material, driving effective corrective action, and reducing the cost of poor quality. The Quality Manager actively leads the QC team, makes timely and defensible decisions, and converts assigned quality initiatives into completed, measurable improvements.

Essential Responsibilities

Team Leadership and Accountability

• Set clear daily priorities, assignments, work standards, and follow-up expectations for quality team members.
• Address attendance, conduct, productivity, quality, and teamwork concerns promptly and consistently; document coaching and corrective conversations as required.
• Conduct regular one-on-one coaching, performance reviews, and development discussions.
• Build team capability through training, cross-training, clear work instructions, and consistent inspection decisions.

Quality Decisions and Authority

• Make timely acceptance, rejection, containment, reinspection, and disposition decisions using available facts and established requirements.
• Stop or hold a shipment when a credible quality risk exists.
• Quarantine questionable raw material, work in process, or finished goods until disposition is determined.
• Require reinspection when product or process control is uncertain.
• Initiate corrective action and escalate overdue, incomplete, or ineffective responses.
• Require documented approval for deviations from established specifications.
• Escalate decisions to the Director of Operations when business risk, customer impact, or authority limits genuinely require senior involvement.

Quality System Ownership

• Develop and maintain a prevention-focused quality system that covers incoming, final, and pre-shipment controls.
• Establish risk-based inspection plans, acceptance criteria, and documentation requirements.
• Maintain product specifications, visual standards, inspection checklists, procedures, and quality records.
• Implement operator self-checks and layered process audits at critical production steps.
• Monitor where defects originate and where they are detected; move controls upstream when practical.
• Maintain control of rejected, quarantined, and nonconforming material through documented disposition.
• Coordinate calibration and verification of inspection and measuring equipment.

Corrective Action and Problem Solving

• Review the Error Log and determine when an issue requires formal corrective action based on recurrence, severity, customer impact, safety, compliance, or cost.
• Create and assign corrective actions to the manager who owns the affected process.
• Facilitate practical root-cause analysis and ensure actions address the cause rather than only the immediate symptom.
• Track commitments and due dates, communicate risks early, and escalate overdue actions.
• Verify effectiveness before closing corrective actions and reopen issues when recurrence demonstrates that the response was ineffective.
• Lead containment and response for customer complaints, returns, significant remakes, and supplier nonconformances.

Quality Initiatives and Continuous Improvement

• Translate directed quality initiatives into a written action plan with an owner, deliverables, milestones, due dates, and success measures within five working days.
• Maintain visible status for active initiatives and identify schedule, resource, or decision risks before deadlines are missed.
• Lead quality improvement projects that reduce repeat defects, remakes, rework, and inspection dependence.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Logo, Padding, Customs, Shipping and Warehouse, Purchasing, Maintenance, and other functions to improve process capability and handoffs.
• Support new-product and process reviews by identifying quality risks and control requirements before release.

Measurement and Reporting

• Maintain accurate and timely quality data, including errors, remakes, returns, shipping errors, supplier issues, and corrective-action status.
• Track defects by originating department, product family, root cause, detection point, and financial impact.
• Normalize performance where appropriate using order volume, linear feet, square feet, or another relevant production measure.
• Present weekly risks and priorities and a monthly quality dashboard.
• Provide an initial response to customer returns and complaints within one business day and coordinate investigation through closure.

Required Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience leading employees in a manufacturing quality or production environment.
• Proven ability to address performance issues, make difficult decisions, and hold others accountable.
• Working knowledge of incoming, in-process, and final inspection; nonconforming-material control; root-cause analysis; corrective action; and process auditing.
• Ability to interpret product specifications, drawings, work instructions, and customer requirements.
• Strong organization, written communication, data analysis, and follow-through skills.
• Proficiency with spreadsheets, dashboards, and manufacturing or ERP systems.
• Ability to communicate respectfully and directly with production employees, managers, suppliers, customers, and senior leadership.

Pay: $55,000.00 - $65,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Work Location: In person