West- Supplier Quality Engineer-1st

· Responsible for product quality for direct material suppliers, including investigating, analyzing and resolving supplier quality issues by conducting audits, analyzing defect trends, and leading continuous improvement projects.

· Develops long-term supplier relationships and Drives “Zero Defect” mentality within the supply base.

· Communicates with suppliers for quality issues, new programs, and maintenance audits.

· Conducts investigations, records issues, contains product, and initiates clean points for supplier quality issues.

· Champions problem solving and root cause analysis activities with suppliers to prevent recurrence of non-conformances.

· Reviews, processes, and tracks progress of supplier new PPAPs, process changes, special acceptances, and annual PPAPs.

· Conducts and tracks progress on risk based product and process supplier audits to assess root cause/countermeasures after quality issues, approve new suppliers, minimize risk for critical processes, and ensure compliance to NTN and automotive standards.

· Leads supplier performance improvement projects in an effort to increase supplier capability to consistently meeting NTN Driveshaft requirements.

· Works with purchasing to ensure supplier performance is regularly reported and that appropriate and timely corrective actions are implemented.

· Must be able to travel to suppliers as required.

· Interacts with all internal departments, (production, engineering, quality), as well as suppliers and customers.

· Other duties as assigned: sorting, product measurements, training, internal improvements, etc