Vendor Champion

JOB SUMMARY
The Vendor Champion is responsible for continuously reviewing and analyzing quality department process to solve problems, identify opportunities for improvement and drive continuous improvement efforts through implementation. The VC will assess and measure individual performance as well as supplier and team performance, identify what needs to be done to meet customer needs and work effectively with internal and external team to meet the quality standards. The VC needs to communicate with US CQI office and office corresponding teams to set GOALs within quality team and clearly give direction and share the ideas and important information to the team, peers, and suppliers to achieve the quality department GOALs.
The VC needs to ensure the application in continuous improvement methodologies such as Lean and Value Engineering to improve quality, eliminate waste, and to reduce cost. They need to assess the effectiveness of a business function and offer recommendations for improvement. The primary responsibility is to lead and manage the continuous improvement initiatives primarily in Ashley Furniture’s Asian manufacturing suppliers, with occasional extension of deployment of the continuous improvement approaches to various Ashley manufacturing and customer locations.
In summary, the VC will lead and manage practical, hands-on training in methodology and tools to eliminate waste and create continuous improvement in manufacturing people and processes within quality department as well as support other functional areas. They will need to demonstrate the ability to work effectively in a fast paced and changing environment with multiple priorities and drive results.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Quality team management. Clear communicate with Ashley CQI office and set GOALs by giving clear direction with QA/QC team to achieve the set GOALs by set KPI for team members and manage this
2. Consistently review with team on the performance to keep continuous improvements, this includes daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally and yearly department GOALs and achievements
3. Full knowledge of Ashley quality control system tools as QIS system and Dominator APP. Providing feedbacks with system development team to keep improving of the tools to better organize the team’s daily work this also requests to provide continuous training with team members of the developed system functions to have team stay most efficient daily
4. Drive continuous improvement efforts and provide management with cost benefit analysis, streamlining workflow and have the Standard Operation Procedure set and keep improving to make sure team stay most organized on the quality operation
5. By researching and communicating through the whole supply chain to know the quality expectations from the customer and develop appropriate quality standards and establish clear service standards for customers and operators to manage team stay in this correct approach within daily work
6. Provide immediate actions on the Home Store operation customer complaints by set up Ashley Furniture Managed (AFI) QIS projects through work with US champions and get prioritized review at production line to get solutions and SOPs update and trained with vendor related staff on the preventing the issues from re-occurring within the latest cutting
7. Providing the quality-related training within suppliers, QA and QC teams to have each of team stay aligned on the quality standards
8. Get continuous training within vendor base to have the Vendor Managed (VMI) QIS projects to be updated with higher quality and the closure rate from each supplier needs to be set and followed to hit each week. The projects need to be closed within the latest cutting
9. Collect and analyze performance metrics and trends, analyze data, and prepare reports and analysis to evaluate team’s performance and keep continuous improvements
10. Communicate with Ashley QA Teams, Regional Offices, and other functional areas to ensure consistency in service across the business
11. Effective problem solving, analytical, and communication skills
12. Strong attention to detail, highly organized and ability to prioritize and meet deadlines with a strong focus on reducing / eliminating errors or defects and leading the team stay the same correct track of this
13. Strong understanding of the value of technology and its impact on Quality and Continuous Improvement
14. Strong project management skills required--Coordinate the selection, scoping, planning and implementation of Continuous Improvement projects and events to achieve improvements through each project
15. Experience in driving change management
16. Apply practical and intermediate level knowledge in CI methods to improve quality, reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction
17. Stay informed of the latest external developments in best practices and help bring those onboard as appropriate and needed. Keep improving and stay open discussion with cross the operations on the latest information
18. Work closely with the new product development teams to execute new product launches in Ashley Furniture and develop and implement pre-production review for new product launches
19. Work with factory management to clearly communicate the Ashley standards to have vendor bases stay high focus on the continuous improvements of the product quality and the production processes.
20. Train personnel to properly build and conduct product and process inspections, investigations and audits, effectively solve and improve product/processes through the application of sound Continuous Improvement methodologies.
21. Maintain reliable attendance
22. Team development
23. Must be comfortable working in a fast-paced and demanding environment
SCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITY
Primarily responsible for individual work - minimal direct supervision

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