Senior Programme Quality Engineer

Background

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Purpose of Role

• As a Senior Programme Quality Engineer, you will engage at the very front end of the conceptual design process and play an integral role within the project team as one of the lead Quality representatives, to influence the style as well as product to support the business and product quality objectives.
• The collation and understanding of current product issues sourced from both internal departmental systems and external field sensors is central to this role to ensure continuous product improvement. This is a challenging area with responsibilities ranging from functional resource management, project gateways, initial product target setting, all the way through to vehicle launch.
• This is a challenging area of the business that operates at all levels of leadership from shop floor to executive director, across multiple projects at any given time and works cross functionally to resolve issues from concept through to launch. This role requires someone with a high level of interpersonal and communication skills with a key attribute being the ability to challenge, persuade, convince, and guide with assertion, while building important relationships at all levels both internally and externally across the business.

• Reporting to the ‘Programme Quality Manager’ this role is responsible for supporting all programme quality activities across the respective vehicle projects.
• Achieving all project gateway milestones is key to the successful delivery of all programmes. Therefore, the role will be required to coordinate the completion of all MDP deliverables for the given programme.
• Responsible to support the quality risk assessment against the programme supported by the LQOS process.
• Must be able to work pragmatically in a team to find ways forward, while maintaining a clear focus on Quality.
• Continuous improvement of known quality issues through the new model process.

Principal Accountabilities

Programme Quality Coordination

• As part of the team representing quality at each project specific meeting, it will be your responsibility to ensure each business unit area within quality is kept appraised of any activities affecting them. It is also key to ensure that customer quality aspects are considered throughout, and the right decisions are made based on this.
• Responsible to ensure that all project gateway milestones are reported accurately, this is key to the successful delivery of all new products. Therefore, you will be required to coordinate the completion of all MDP deliverables for your given project. Ownership for ensuring that all quality targets are defined in accordance with McLaren Product Audit (MPA) and Fault Per Vehicle (FPV)
• Responsible to support the Quality Concern Avoidance (QCA) activity to ensure robust prevention of repeat critical quality issues.
• Responsible to support the prioritisation of issues to ensure the business can make informed decisions when launching vehicle programmes.
• Responsible to support the governance of all quality control aspects, including the development of the project quality control plan and LQOS process.
• Responsible to support the vehicle quality attribute review together with product quality standards and engineering teams.
• Responsible to support driving improvements in quality culture across the programme team.
• Responsible to support and track all programme quality reporting against MDP deliverables.

Design Concept Risk Management

• Working with the product quality standards department to expose and manage virtual problems at an early stage of product development and communicate to the business, thus finding optimal design solutions.
• Commercial impacts and business constraints in relation to component quality expectations.
• Effectively communicate concerns to senior management for concept/business decisions.

Launch management /

Fault Management

• Support and steer the faults management team to ensure all quality issues are raised within the company faults management system.
• Coordinate vehicle movement through the quality department, and work with those areas to ensure they have identified all quality issues and raised Quality Concern Records (QCR) accordingly.
• Coordinate the McLaren Production Audit (MPA), fault resolution via the Credit Debit Balance (CDB) system to ensure the project has clear direction on all quality issues.
• Represent quality at the weekly launch readiness reviews, presenting the overall project quality status.

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Experience of low volume, high value automotive products.
• An understanding/appreciation of customer quality expectations.
• Experience of low volume launch activities.
• Experience/knowledge of high-performance vehicle dynamics, or an interest to learn.
• Experience of engineering design reviews.
• Experience of manufacturing process reviews.
• Knowledge of faults management control and KPI delivery.
• Experience of styling design reviews.
• Knowledge of budget planning and review meetings.
• Experience of reporting at exec director level meetings.
• Experience of launch Readiness reviews.

• Project Management experience.
• 8D or Practical Problem Solving (PPS).
• Methodical approach to work with strong analytical skills.
• Good problem-solving ability.
• Basic understanding of SPC, statistics and process capabilities.

Personal Attributes

• Unquestionable personal and professional integrity.
• Enthusiastic, driven, and positive.
• Quality focused - with demonstrated experience of automotive new model development.
• Driven by accuracy with high attention to detail.
• Ability to manage, prioritise tasks efficiently.
• Excellent organisational skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Able to build good relationships at all levels, internally and externally.
• Resilient; able to work under pressure, and to tight deadlines.
• Ambitious, self-reliant, and intrinsically self-motivated.
• Take ownership of the solutions and champion the change until implementation and full adoption.
• Able to work with and influence employees at all levels.
• Gains the respect of colleagues and is a team player who is more interested in results than personal preferences.