Quality Control Area Manager

The key responsibilities of the QC area manager is to plan, manage and coordinate the daily activities of a sub-team within the Quality Control team at Northvolt Labs. This includes ensuring the execution of the control plan, both the logistics and successful testing of incoming and outgoing materials to and from the QC laboratory, as well as collaborating with stakeholders from production/quality/logistics/R&D/cell design to support them as best as possible in terms of their daily QC needs and requirements. Additionally, the area manager’s responsibility is to maximise the use of available resources (personnel, equipment, material), build a strong and talented team that can meet the high demands of our internal customers in terms of quality, efficiency, and turn-around time of results.
The Quality Control Area Manager has several key types of responsibilities, each with a distinct set of duties and expectations. In addition, this role requires a high degree of flexibility and ability to cope with ambiguity and rapid change in production operations and quality control needs.
The main types of responsibilities and expectations thereof are (in no particular order of priority):
Direct Management of Employees. This role usually has several direct reports and as such the Area Manager is expected to handle the day-to-day management of these employees, including:
Assistance with hiring and onboarding.
Attendance.
Vacation, holiday, and other time-off management and approvals.
Corrective actions for behaviour if required.
Ensuring all basic company compliance type training (e.g. safety, company policy) is attended and adhered to.

Operations Management of specific QC activities (both employees and throughput). This responsibility is concerned with the actual productivity of the sub-team.
Management of the execution of all quality control analyses of the sub-team as per the control plan.
Plan and communicate to the team their daily/weekly priorities (immediate to 168-hour timeframe), ensure expectations and responsibilities are clear.
Responsible for short-term planning and scheduling of people and resources to achieve optimal throughput, as well as any necessary planning involved with control plan and project changes.
Coordinate logistics of incoming/outgoing samples to/from QC lab; immediate collection and reporting of results back to production.
Support the team with running analytical testing on a range of instruments.
Ensure non-conformities about material deviations are reported and follow up on improvement.

Operational Training, Quality, and Safety Compliance of Direct Personnel and Daily Processes. The Area Managers are responsible for ensuring that basic expectations and requirements are met, which includes:
Strict adherence to all safety requirements and safe operation/handling of equipment and materials by all team members; ensure the team works in the safest manner possible.
Drive continuous improvement of ways of workings and analyses to increase the team’s efficiency and optimize analyses turn-around times.
Ensure continuous cross-training within the team; set up training sessions, develop & grow expertise within the team for them to be able to safely and competently perform their tasks.
Ensure SOPs and WIs are being followed and continuously updated. This includes strict adherence to Northvolt’s 5S standards.

Expect, Plan For, and Manage a Certain Degree of Ambiguity and Constant Change. This job, due to the company still being a start-up environment, requires flexibility and the ability to work well and coordinate with others. It requires the ability to build relationships and trust across boundaries of responsibility, continuously collaborate with all internal customers to ensure to support them as best as needed, so that ultimately the company can operate as a team with a common goal, while still holding each other accountable for their respective expectations.