Senior Manager, Manufacturing Engineering (Robot Production)

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Design the production process: layout and cycle time, line balancing, station and fixture design, end-of-line test and calibration, material flow.
• Capacity planning: stations, equipment, people and hours by build phase, from the first units to rate, and the plan to add capacity ahead of demand.
• Specify, source and commission fixtures, tooling and test equipment: requirements, RFQ with Supply Chain, acceptance at the vendor and on the floor.
• Own process documentation under revision control: work instructions with photos and video, PFMEA, control plans, inspection plans, SOPs;
• Run the transfer from engineering builds to production: pilot builds, DFM and DFA feedback with the authority to push back, build readiness reviews at each phase gate, release to volume.
• Package the process so it can be copied: one documented set of stations, fixtures, test, instructions and training that a partner's floor can run to the same yield as ours.
• Build and lead the team: manufacturing engineers, test engineers and technicians; hiring pace, training and certification, trainer capacity, shift structure as volume grows.
• Own the quality gate: first-pass yield, defect capture, root cause (8D, SPC, DOE where it earns its keep), closed-loop feedback to engineering and suppliers; nothing ships that quality has not passed.

Job requirements

• You have taken a complex electromechanical product from prototype through pilot to volume and designed the process yourself, not inherited it. Robots, vehicles, drones, medical devices, industrial equipment all count.
• You have transferred a process to a contract manufacturer and held them to your standard.
• Strong manufacturing engineering foundation: time studies, line balancing, capacity planning, fixture and tooling design, test strategy, PFMEA and control plans, lean and continuous improvement; CAD and GD&T fluency.
• You have hired and trained technicians, written certification criteria, and know that trained people are the real constraint on throughput.
• You have run a quality gate and held it under schedule pressure.
• You are on the floor every day and rigorous in the data.
• 8 or more years in manufacturing engineering or production, with time in a mature organization so you know what good looks like at scale, and 3 or more years leading people.
• Bonus: actuators, gearboxes or precision assemblies; PLM, MES and ERP implementation; product safety certification processes.