Regional Quality Director

Ford; Dearborn (MI); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

PTO

Stock plan

Job summary

Ford Dearborn, MI is seeking a Senior Quality Leader to drive regional quality across six plants. You will lead cross-plant containment, restart verification, and champion Ford Way standards while coordinating with Mfg IT, GDIA, and engineering.

The role requires 10+ years in automotive manufacturing or quality, a bachelor's in engineering, and travel up to 40-50%. You will guide warranty response, RCAs, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in automotive manufacturing, vehicle operations, or quality management.
• Strong ability to drive cross-functional problem solving across Engineering, Supply Chain, and Plant Operations.
• Experience implementing regional quality improvements and containment.
• Proven track record with unionized manufacturing environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-plant containment and restart verification across six plants.
• Own the Regional Quality Bowler cadence to drive RCA for FRC/RTY/GQRS.
• Direct the shop-floor execution of AI vision systems, IoT torque tools, and related dashboards.
• Enforce Ford Way, standards, and control plans to eliminate unauthorized workarounds.
• Lead Lessons Learned sharing and Gemba cadence with plant teams.
• Oversee Warranty War Room and design-for-manufacturing fixes with PVT/engineering.
• Coordinate Integrated Launch Rhythm and idle plant restart protocols.
• Provide regulatory triage support in investigations and NHTSA inquiries.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional problem solving

Automotive manufacturing

Travel up to 50%

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Job description

You Will...

• Lead immediate cross-plant 'Read Across' containment when quality or supplier failures occur at any facility, including maintaining restart verification checks for the idle site.

• KPI Operational Cadence: Own the daily/weekly 'Regional Quality Bowler' rhythm across all six plants, driving root-cause resolution for FRC, RTY, and GQRS performance gaps.

• Digital & Predictive Quality Deployment: Direct the shop-floor execution of AI vision systems, IoT torque tools, IPQD, EOL AI, and FTT dashboards in coordination with Mfg. IT and GDIA.

• Error Proofing & Bypass Governance: Enforce strict operational monitoring of Error Proofing (EP) and process bypass modes, ensuring immediate containment and GDIA compliance.

• Standardization & 'The Ford Way': Enforce 100% compliance with 'The Ford Way,' SC/CC standards, and control plans across all lines, systematically eliminating unauthorized plant-specific workarounds.

• Cross-Plant Best Practice Sharing: Facilitate structured 'Lessons Learned' sharing across all six plants to ensure solutions engineered at one site are rapidly scaled across the region.

• Gemba & Floor Leadership: Maintain an intensive Gemba cadence across all sites, working directly with plant teams to remove operational barriers to quality.

• Warranty & Field Quality Execution: Direct the weekly operational 'Warranty War Room' for 0-36 MIS truck warranty, partnering with PVT and engineering teams on design-for-manufacturing fixes.

• Launch & Restart Synchronization: Operationalize the Integrated Launch Rhythm across facilities to ensure launch learnings are hard coded into future plans and idle plant restart protocols remain active.

• Regulatory & Triage Support: Lead technical floor support during field investigations and NHTSA inquiries and serve as the operational lead for the CCRG Triage Team and VQR customer concerns (e.g., transmission contamination, window bounce back, e-coat boil-out).

You'll Have...

• Education: Bachelor's degree in engineering (Mechanical, Electrical, Industrial, Automotive) or a related technical/STEM discipline.

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in automotive manufacturing, vehicle operations, or quality management.

• Travel: Ability to travel up to 40-50% across the six regional plant facilities.

• Leadership & Execution: Demonstrated track record of driving cross-functional problem solving across Engineering, Supply Chain, and Plant Operations in a complex, unionized manufacturing environment.

What you'll receive in return...

As part of the Ford family, you'll enjoy excellent compensation, and a comprehensive benefits package that includes generous PTO, retirement, savings and stock investment plans, incentive compensation, and much more. You'll also experience exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth and recognition.

Our benefits summary can be found here:

2026-New-Hire-Benefit-Summary-LL4.pdf

As an established global company, we offer the benefit of choice. You can choose what your Ford future will look like: will your story span the globe, or keep you close to home? Will your career be a deep dive into what you love, or a series of new teams and new skills? Will you be a leader, a changemaker, a technical expert, a culture builder...or all of the above? No matter what you choose, we offer a work life that works for you, including:

• Immediate medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage
• Flexible family care days, paid parental leave, new parent ramp-up programs, subsidized back-up child care and more
• Family building benefits including adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility treatments, and more
• Vehicle discount program for employees and family members and management leases
• Tuition assistance
• Established and active employee resource groups
• Paid time off for individual and team community service
• A generous schedule of paid holidays, including the week between Christmas and New Year's Day
• Paid time off and the option to purchase additional vacation time.

This position is a leadership level 4.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

Candidates for positions with Ford Motor Company must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Verification of employment eligibility will be required at the time of hire.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status or protected veteran status. In the United States, if you need a reasonable accommodation for the online application process due to a disability, please call 1-888-336-0660.

Onsite work of up to four days per week may be required for candidates within commuting distance of a Ford hub location.