Product R&D Manager

at  Kemppi Group Oy

Kemppi is the design leader of the arc welding industry. We are committed to boosting the quality and productivity of welding by continuous development of the welding arc and by working for greener and more equal world. Kemppi supplies sustainable products, digital solutions, and services for professionals from industrial welding companies to single contractors. The usability and reliability of our products is our guiding principle. We operate with a highly skilled partner network covering over 70 countries to make its expertise locally available. Headquartered in Lahti, Finland, Kemppi employs close to 800 professionals in 17 countries and has a revenue of 209 MEUR.

We are searching for a Product R&D Manager to join our Safety organization. In this role you will be responsible for managing a team of highly trained professionals. This entails overseeing the research and product development process, including project management, team leadership, communication with key stakeholders and ensuring the timely delivery of next generation innovative safety products to our markets.
To be successful in this role, the position holder needs to have industry-specific experience, relevant leadership skills and technical qualifications. It is also important to be an inspiring leader and engage the team to work together towards achieving organizational goals.
This role will be in Lahti Finland where the team is located. There are possibilities for remote working at times.

Key responsibilities:

• Lead key projects with R&D to support business goals.
• Stay on top of the latest technologies to improve existing products and study the potential of new products.
• Supervise activities of R&D personnel, including performing annual performance reviews and providing other performance feedback as required
• Determine and execute improved technologies used by suppliers, competitors, and customers.
• Act as primary point of contact between Suppliers and R&D team.
• Establish project goals and priorities by collaborating with different departments.
• Research, design and evaluate materials, assemblies, processes, and equipment.
• Suggest training tools to enhance employee performance and skill development.
• Monitor team metrics and objectives ensuring meeting of goals.
• Monitor project costs
• Manage customer relationships from a product development perspective, perform customer visits, and product testing.
• Establish and maintain testing procedures for assessing raw materials, in-process and finished products.
• Oversee complex product development projects, analyze results and provide recommendations based on findings.
• Assess the scope of our projects and ensure they are on time and within budget.
• Attendance at industry conferences, safety associations on research topics of interest.
• Work closely with the commercial product manager and markets organization to identify the key features of a new product
• Provide technical product argumentations to Commercial product manager and Marketing team.

Tasks:

• Plan and priorities the daily work for the team in line with business objectives and focus areas.
• Keep Product Development process up to date and arrange gate approval meetings.
• Plan and oversee project budget.
• Manage ongoing project meetings with key stakeholders and reporting to management.
• Deliver projects within the planned timelines.
• Lead R&D’s projects overall risk assessment and issue management.
• Lead and organise product development activities within commercial product manager
• Manage external R&D resources
• Stay on top of product quality matters