Head of Quality

Location: Roma, Italy

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Roma hosts the commercial offices to be close to Costumer and Public Administration.

We are currently looking for a **Head of Quality & Customer Satisfaction Manager**to join Thales Italia team, working in the Defense and Civil Market.

He/ She will ensure the Quality of deliverables and compliance with customer requirements and operational performance, while improving Customer Satisfaction and operational maturity. He/she manages the continuous improvement of the functional area to optimize Company competitiveness. He/ she manages the Quality team for his or her area, composed of several local business units.

**JOB OBJECTIVES AND KEY RESPONSIBILITIES**:
Will ensure the implementation of processes, practices and specific tools, to make sure the tender or the project life cycle is in line with the Group defined processes (CHORUS) as well as the Customer requirements and international regulations (ISO, AQAP, etc.).
The main mission is to support all organizations in delivering quality and efficiency of the operations all along business life cycles, improving customer satisfaction and developing their operational maturity.

The main responsibilities are to:

- Ensure the quality of all the operations: quality of what is delivered to customers, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency (balance quality versus cost).
- Manage the efficiency of the Quality & Customer Satisfaction organizations and develop people skills to deliver the value expected by the stakeholders and leverage quality as a key step in the career path.
- Manage the Group Management System (Chorus) and its instantiations, ensuring process efficiency, compliance to standards and certifications.
- Provide an objective view of quality to management from both operational and strategic perspectives.
- Execute the Quality and Customer Satisfaction (QCS) performance (OTD, OCD, CoNQ) and transformation plans.
- Drive quality performance and anticipate risk to achieve long-term operational excellence.
- Promote a quality culture to ensure process efficiency and reduce the costs of non-quality.
- Support the organizations in developing their maturity in order to enhance their operational performance.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of practices and capitalization on experience, drive growth in organizational maturity.
- Serve as the voice of the Customer and the main stakeholders (regulations, certification bodies, suppliers, etc.).
- Be a customer ‘’champion’’ and develop everyone’s “quality and customer mindset’’ and to that end, assess regularly the customers’ satisfaction, confidence and loyalty.

Quality Management
- Provide leadership for the QCS organization in accordance with the rules and expectations of the Group’s leadership.
- Ensure alert and veto mechanisms are implemented in all countries, manage escalation process as appropriate.
- Represent Thales in the main (for its business) national and international quality organisms, to be part of new norms evolution, to monitor and anticipate new trends and emerging quality norms.
- Coordinate, in cooperation with HR, the management of the QCS resources, including people development. Optimize resource allocation at the region level.
- Coach the QCS resources in the countries of the region to develop maturity of the country organization.

Quality Assurance (QA)
- Guarantee product/project quality and ensure that the level of quality provides value and satisfaction to customers.
- Implement the Group's risk-based quality assurance policy by anticipating, preventing and proactively addressing risks, including quality assurance of suppliers (in coordination with procurement).

Customer Satisfaction:

- Makes the customer's voice heard to ensure long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty to the Group.
- Ensures that the relationship with strategic Group customers on quality issues is managed and that strong, proactive contact is established with the customer to allow for preventive measures designed to ensure customer satisfaction.

Management System/Certifications:

- Ensure that the management system is appropriate, coherent, performant and optimized at the Country level.
- Conduct accreditations and certifications and provide support for the preparatory process, as appropriate.
- Define and manage the policy for auditing processes. Identify and implement synergies at Country level.

**DETAILED RESPONSIBILITIES**
- Coordination of BL Quality managers allocated in the country (or group of Country). All Quality & Customer Satisfaction staff operating in a BL, Competence Centre, or Function are part of the Quality & Customer Satisfaction Department of