1. Take full responsibility for the plant quality team and Quality Management System. Develop annual quality objectives, operating plans, departmental budgets, and quality improvement programs, and remain accountable for overall plant quality performance.
2. Establish and continuously improve quality control processes for commercial vehicle assembly, including incoming inspection, station inspection, in-process inspection, quality gates, end-of-line testing, road testing, PDI, and final vehicle release.
3. Establish critical quality control points throughout the vehicle manufacturing process, with particular focus on the chassis, axles, powertrain, cab, electrical harnesses, braking system, steering system, lighting, sealing, critical torque, and overall vehicle functionality.
4. Establish vehicle release and stop-release mechanisms. Promptly quarantine, rework, stop shipment, and escalate any vehicle that fails to meet applicable quality, safety, or regulatory requirements.
5. Lead the resolution of major on-site quality issues. Organize containment actions, defect reproduction, 8D analysis, 5 Whys, and root-cause validation, and implement permanent corrective actions with lessons learned deployed across similar products and processes.
6. Establish a rapid-response mechanism for batch quality issues. Organize quality walls, 100% inspections, sorting, rework, and screening of potentially affected vehicles to prevent defective vehicles and components from reaching the market.
7. Lead quality planning for new models and new projects, including risk identification during the APQP phase, DFMEA and PFMEA reviews, Control Plan development, inspection standard development, and quality gate planning.
8. Manage quality follow-up during prototype builds, trial builds, pilot production, and production ramp-up. Drive closure of open issues, confirm process capability, and approve quality readiness for serial production.
9. Participate in product and process change management to ensure alignment among the Bill of Materials, drawings, process documents, software versions, inspection standards, and actual production configuration, preventing incorrect assembly, missing parts, and mixed product versions.
10. Establish control and traceability mechanisms for special characteristics, critical dimensions, critical torque values, and regulatory components, ensuring that all relevant quality data is accurate, complete, and readily traceable.
11. Manage the calibration and control of gauges, measuring instruments, inspection equipment, and testing equipment. Organize Measurement System Analysis, Statistical Process Control, and process capability studies.
12. Collaborate with the Supplier Quality team to resolve incoming material defects and supplier-related batch quality issues. Drive suppliers to implement containment actions, complete 8D corrective actions, and achieve sustained improvement.
13. Establish a closed-loop process for after-sales quality issues. Regularly analyze failures reported by dealers, service centers, fleet customers, and end users, and drive improvements in product design, manufacturing processes, assembly, and inspection.
14. Analyze warranty claims, early-life failures, repeat repairs, and major customer complaints to reduce market PPM, failures per 1,000 vehicles, warranty claim rates, and warranty cost per vehicle.
15. Promptly organize risk assessments for issues involving vehicle safety, regulatory compliance, or potential batch exposure. Support field containment, recall assessments, vehicle rectification campaigns, and communication with regulatory authorities.
16. Establish and maintain the IATF 16949 and ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems. Organize internal audits, process audits, product audits, management reviews, third-party certification audits, and customer audits.
17. Ensure that audit nonconformities, customer complaints, and internal quality issues are analyzed, corrected, verified, and formally closed within the required timelines, preventing recurrence of similar issues.
18. Collaborate with Product Compliance, Homologation, Certification, and Engineering teams to ensure that vehicle conformity of production, product configuration, and quality release comply with applicable Brazilian vehicle approval, environmental, and safety requirements.
19. Establish a plant quality KPI management system, conduct regular quality review meetings, and issue daily, weekly, monthly, and special quality improvement reports.
20. Manage quality-related costs, including rework, scrap, customer claims, and warranty expenses. Identify major sources of quality loss and lead cost-reduction initiatives.
21. Take responsibility for the organizational planning of the quality team, including recruitment, staffing, role definition, skills matrices, training and certification, performance coaching, and succession planning.
22. Establish departmental and individual KPIs, cascade annual objectives, conduct regular performance reviews, and ensure that the team achieves the quality targets required by the company.
23. Collaborate with Production, Manufacturing Engineering, R&D, Purchasing, Supplier Quality, After-Sales Service, Product Compliance, Homologation, and Sales teams to ensure the timely resolution of quality issues.
24. Establish an emergency-response mechanism for major quality risks. In the event of batch failures, major customer complaints, or safety-related quality incidents, organize an immediate response and promptly report the situation to senior management.
