Automotive Quality System Engineer in Pulaski
Job Description
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The Quality Systems Engineer holds the quality management system itself: the documented system, the audit program, the verification standard the floor works to, supplier quality, warranty, and the coordination of continual improvement. The position exists so that the system is administered by someone whose work it is, rather than carried by the Quality Manager alongside the department, and so that the system continues to operate when any individual moves on.
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The position is a senior engineer role aligned with the equivalent role at Markdom Mexico. It does not carry a customer portfolio; the Quality Engineers hold the customers.
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QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
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• Owns the Quality Manual and the structure of the quality management system documents: maintains them, keeps them aligned to the standard and to the way the site operates, and directs their revision through Document Control.
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• Maintains the customer specific requirements matrix and ensures each requirement is deployed to the process that has to meet it.
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• Maintains the quality performance indicators and prepares the quality input to management review.
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• Confirms that a documented process exists for every requirement the standard makes documented, and identifies where one does not.
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AUDIT PROGRAM
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• Plans the annual internal audit program covering system, manufacturing process and product audits, and maintains it against the plan.
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• Schedules audits, assigns auditors, directs the Quality Systems Auditor, and confirms that no auditor audits their own work.
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• Maintains the qualified internal auditor list and the qualification criteria, and plans the training and revalidation required to keep it populated across departments.
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• Coordinates external audits: the certification body, customer audits and second party audits, including preparation and follow-up.
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• Confirms the effectiveness of the corrective action before closure is presented to the Quality Manager for signature.
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FLOOR VERIFICATION STANDARD
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• Sets, with the Quality Engineers, the verification criteria, frequencies and sampling the Quality Auditors work to, and deploys them through the Quality Lead.
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• Issues and maintains the incoming inspection instruction used by the incoming Quality Auditors.
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• Reviews verification, dock audit and incoming data for trends, and changes the standard where the data shows it is not working.
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SUPPLIER QUALITY
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• Leads supplier quality for the site: evaluation, approval and monitoring of suppliers whose product or service affects conformity.
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• Plans and performs supplier audits, and follows the corrective actions arising from them to closure.
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• Maintains supplier scorecards, reviews supplier performance with the MP&L Manager, and reviews supplier certificates.
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• Brings into the approved supplier process the providers that affect conformity and are not yet in it: external sorting providers and tooling repair contractors.
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WARRANTY AND FIELD FAILURE
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• Owns the warranty management system required by IATF 16949 clause 10.2.5, including the analysis of warranty parts, and field failure test analysis under clause 10.2.6.
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• Reviews warranty data from customers, works to obtain it from those who do not provide it, and applies the no trouble found policy where a customer requires one.
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CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT
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• Coordinates the improvement program: maintains the project register, records the benefit expected and verified, and reports progress.
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• Converts performance data into improvement projects, coaches problem solving across departments and supports the Fast Response process.
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• Maintains the site's entries in the Markdom global continuous improvement tracker.
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Measures:
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• Plans the internal audit program and assigns auditors.
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• Requires a process owner to respond to a finding, and refuses to present closure where the evidence does not support it.
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• Issues verification criteria, frequencies and the incoming inspection instruction.
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• Requires a supplier to be evaluated before it is used for a product or service affecting conformity, and places a supplier on controlled shipping or requests its removal from the approved supplier list.
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• Requires a document to be created or revised where a process operates without one, or where the document does not describe the process.
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• Escalates to the Quality Manager and to the General Manager where a requirement cannot be met with the resources available.
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Required
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• Bachelor's degree in engineering or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.
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• Five years or more in a quality role in automotive manufacturing, with direct responsibility for a quality management system.
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• Working knowledge of IATF 16949 sufficient to maintain a system against it, not only to work within one.
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• Certified internal auditor, or able to be certified within the first six months.
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• Core tools: APQP, PPAP, FMEA, MSA and SPC; experience of customer audits and of a certification audit.
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• Able to write a procedure that describes how work is actually done.
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7.2
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• IATF 16949 Lead Auditor certification.
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• Injection molding experience.
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• Experience of the customer portals used at this site: Toyota, Ford, General Motors and Rivian.
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• Supplier auditing and warranty management experience.
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7.3 Personal
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• Able to require an answer from a department manager without authority over them.
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• Organised in a way that does not depend on memory, because the position holds several registers at once.
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• Willing to record that something is not done, rather than record that it is.
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First Twelve Months:
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The position is being established at a site whose certification was withdrawn in 2024 and which is rebuilding its quality management system. The work in the first year is not steady state.
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Period Priority What complete looks like
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Months 1 to 3
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Internal audit program running with the Quality Systems Auditor; auditor list populated across departments; incoming inspection instruction issued; document control operating with the change request in use. Audits happening on plan; findings on the Fast Response board; auditors outside Quality on the list; incoming verification running on 1st and 2nd shift.
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Months 4 to 6
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Supplier quality established: providers affecting conformity evaluated, scorecards issued, supplier audits planned. External sorting providers and tooling contractors on the approved supplier list with evaluations on file.
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Months 7 to 9
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Warranty management system established; warranty data sought from the customers who do not provide it. Warranty reviewed monthly and feeding corrective action.
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Months 10 to 12
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Improvement program running from data; the system stable enough to survive absence.
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Projects registered with benefits verified; another person able to run the audit program from the records.
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