Senior Manager, Tooling FTW

This is a senior role within Sourcing, acting as a key player in driving Sourcing's vision to be the most agile, most competitive, most digitalised and cleanest supply base in the industry. The postholder manages the tooling creation and tooling manufacturing process within assigned factories or factory groups, with a focus on lead time and quality, and leads tooling team members to drive tooling efficiency and quality in T1 factories, mold shops and component suppliers. The role also supports Product Creation Technologies (PCT) in future technology and policy development and update, and ensures adidas innovation technologies and processes are implemented across the factories and factory groups for which the postholder is responsible.

• Lead one or more tooling teams in the assigned factory or factory groups across tooling development, commercialisation and production, ensuring quality, lead times, rejection rate, productivity and price conformity.
• Consult and participate in the LO Costing team's tooling costing process, submitting theoretical weight and verifying cycle time for outsole.
• Contribute to the adidas lean manufacturing programme for mold suppliers from the tooling side and implement forecasting and planning tools within local mold suppliers to cut tooling creation and manufacturing lead times.
• Ensure T1 tooling data is available and up to date in the regional tooling data management system and support the further development of that system.
• Manage cross-country mold transfers in terms of transfer times, quality, taxation and further concerns, and support LO, T1 and T2 teams on technical and tooling related issues.
• Lead factories and mold shops to build strong capabilities in CAD creation, rapid prototyping and mold creation.
• Lead assigned Tier 1 factories or factory groups, in collaboration with the PCT team, to publish, establish and evaluate PCT policies, best practices and procedures, identifying improvement opportunities.
• Manage the biyearly production mold audit, product security and mold shop performance tracking (RFT, OTD) to maintain and enhance tooling data security and mold quality.
• Support Regional PCT & Tooling, Asia in creating PCT documentation, implement and provide operations feedback to enhance existing best practices, policies, guidelines and other process standards, and provide input and updates to support tooling allocation among adidas released mold shops.
• Participate in the PCT Technical Training throughout the LO organisation and establish well-structured tooling training for development and commercialisation staff, as well as for other functional LO staff requiring a general understanding of technical points.
• Create, administer and facilitate visitor schedules, managing timelines and relationships with both visitors and T1s or component suppliers.
• Act as DPC/DSO during the management of seasonal tooling allocation to ensure consistent workload and project complexity for adidas released mold suppliers, and act as an intermediary for the escalation of mold cost template complexity issues and tooling transfer issues.
• Ensure all sourcing operations and practices fully comply with adidas' Responsible Sourcing & Purchasing Policy, adidas standards and legal requirements, while managing the relevant processes internally and externally.
• Role model leadership to foster a culture of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion that strives for an inclusive workplace.

• Strong technical knowledge of tooling design, engineering, mold making and manufacturing, CAD, CAM and RP.
• Excellent technical footwear knowledge of product construction and manufacturing methods.
• Good knowledge in lean manufacturing and process automation.
• Strong presentation, negotiation, influencing, interpersonal and communication skills.
• Fluent in English, written and spoken.
• Strong MS Office skills and CAD software, such as Rhino or similar CAD software.
• Strong leadership skills and the ability to work with multidimensional teams.
• University degree in engineering, materials or related areas.

Adidas states that embedding diversity, equity and inclusion into its culture and talent processes gives employees a sense of belonging and its brand a real competitive advantage.