Manager, Quality & Safety

MISUMI Americas, a division of MISUMI Group, is a leading provider of standard, configurable, and custom manufacturing solutions. By integrating a vast catalog of components with a world-class digital manufacturing platform, MISUMI Americas empowers engineers and procurement teams to accelerate innovation across the entire product lifecycle. With operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, the company serves as a vital partner for the most innovative companies in the Americas.

The Manager, Quality & Safety is a critical leadership role responsible for building, owning, and continuously improving the quality and safety ecosystems across Misumi Americas.This role directly impacts the organization's ability to deliver consistent, high-quality products to customers by leading a team of Supplier Quality Engineers, stewarding the Quality Management System (QMS), and ensuring manufacturing partners meet rigorous performance standards.

Beyond quality, this role establishes and drives a comprehensive Safety Management Program across all Misumi Americas facilities, ensuring full regulatory compliance and a proactive safety culture that protects employees and operations.

At a strategic level, this position plays a key role in the integration of Misumi and Fictiv quality systems, processes, and documentation — helping to unify two organizations into a cohesive, scalable operational framework.

Areas of Responsibility: Essential Functions

Directly managing a team of Supplier Quality Engineers (SQEs), including hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, and career development

Setting clear goals and expectations for each SQE aligned with organizational quality objectives, and conducting regular 1:1s and performance check-ins

Coaching SQEs on effective supplier communication, corrective action follow-through, and audit execution

Owning the end-to-end Supplier Quality program, setting strategy and standards that SQEs execute against including manufacturing partner onboarding, ongoing monitoring, and continuous improvement

Reviewing and approving corrective action responses (CARs) escalated by SQEs, ensuring root cause rigor and closure effectiveness

Establishing and maintaining manufacturing partner quality KPIs and presenting performance trends to senior leadership

Undertaking special projects as required

Ensuring that the Misumi QMS remains relevant and is bringing value to the organization in supporting both efficiency and effectiveness in our activities, while meeting customer, industry, and regulatory requirements

Ensuring that risks and opportunities are continually being identified and addressed, using the QMS as a significant risk management tool

Ensuring that Misumi’s evolving QMS remains compliant with the requirements of all internationally recognized standards we are registered to, or claim compliance with

Evaluating, recommending and executing any integration of the Misumi QMS and Fictiv QMS

Managing internal and external audits to ensure that the Misumi US organization is adhering to our QMS requirements and those of our customers and of the ISO9001 standard

Maintaining and publishing audit primers to ensure that all auditees are prepared before external audits

Ensuring customer-specific requirements are reviewed and integrated into our QMS

Identifying and implementing improvements to business processes, particularly those which are in the scope of Misumi’s QMS

Ensuring that QMS documents remain simple but effective, and are updated as processes change

Evaluating, recommending and executing any consolidation of document management processes and systems between Misumi and Fictiv e.g. should we standardize on Intellect for internal document control and the Misumi supplier portal for supplier-facing documents?

Collaborating with PeopleOps to ensure that training material exists where and when needed, and is delivered with subsequent verification of the effectiveness of the training

Reviewing internal and external responses to QMS nonconformances and ensuring they are complete, adequate, and accurate, and that actions taken are verified as being effective

Identifying key performance indicators that inform the organization where the QMS is being successful and where it needs attention

Owning the delivered quality (claims) KPI and driving improvements

Delivering annual quality awareness training

Undertaking special projects as required

Overseeing calibration for Misumi sites by managing external calibration service providers

Operating the QC Lab in Schaumburg to support evaluation of customer returns and to support select inspection activities to eliminate escaping defects 

Undertaking special projects as required

Establishing a Safety Management Program for Misumi Americas including Misumi and Fictiv facilities in Mexico and the US, in collaboration with existing Safety subject matter experts in Mexico. This should include:

Safety documentation

Safety training

Safety inspections, audits, risk assessments and related improvements

Incident investigation (including near misses) and related improvements

Safety reporting, including statutory reporting (City, County, State, Federal)

Ensuring that job safety analyses are conducted and documented at all Misumi Americas locations and sharing these with other Fictiv global locations as appropriate

Developing, leading and evaluating Emergency Response Teams as appropriate at the different Misumi Americas locations

Being the US OSHA subject matter expert and liaising with Mexico NOMs subject matter experts

Providing safety subject matter expertise to Fictiv operations in China and India

Owning safety KPIs and driving improvements

Managing safety data sheets for hazardous materials used on site at all Mexico and US locations

Ensuring compliance with local environmental codes, including measuring and reporting

Controlling subcontractor on-site safety performance

Evaluating and recommending the value in Misumi Americas obtaining ISO14001 and/or ISO45001 registration

Undertaking special projects as required

All employees are expected to maintain and contribute to the QMS.

Desired Traits: Distinguished skills, abilities, features, character, and quality.

• B.S. in Engineering discipline (ideally Mechanical Engineering) 
• A minimum of 5 years working in a quality management role
• Results-oriented, data-driven, and self-directed, using a process approach and risk-based thinking to make significant changes
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills allow you to collaborate successfully at all levels in the organization as well as with suppliers and customers
• Experience of working in a quickly scaling organization with demonstrated agility dealing successfully with unplanned changes
• Blend of tactical pragmatism with strategic innovation
• Experience with quality management system audits to the ISO 9001 standard, and knowledge of other quality management standards such as AS9100, ISO 13485, IATF 16949, etc.

Physical Demands

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee routinely is required to sit; walk; talk and hear; use hands to keyboard, fingers, handle, and feel; stoop, kneel, crouch, twist, crawl, reach, and stretch.
  
  
• Travel: Ability to travel 30% annually both domestically and internationally for team meetings, offsites, customer visits, supplier visits, etc.