Location
Vernon Hills, IL or Lincoln, RI or Camarillo, CA       
Reporting Relationships
The Vice President, Product Management will report to the Senior Vice President, Operations. He/She will have direct and indirect supervisory responsibility for all program managers, product managers, system engineers, project specialists and project coordinators division-wide related to product and program management, as well as matrix reporting responsibility for all cross-functional project team members. 

Responsibilities

Assess, plan, and manage product-lines, platform and derivative product development programs and projects
Commercialize products
Support post-qualification program management
Manage the product pipeline according to the established objectives and accepted operational processes
Ensure adherence to all pipeline-related processes
Monitor processes and make recommendations for improvements to process owners
Lead the Product Pipeline team in prioritizing tasks
Provide budget oversight on each product in the pipeline
Provide regular pipeline updates to senior management
Identify and resolve issues, escalating as appropriate

 
Principal Accountabilities

Ongoing market sensing and competitive analysis (segmentation, product concept discovery):

Maximize market potential through an in-depth understanding of customer needs, industry trends, and market requirements for current, new, and future markets


Product-line management and product program management:

Develop product-line strategies, roadmaps, and product portfolios that optimize market share, profitability, revenue retention and growth, and other strategic objectives
Define products that will win in the marketplace through the alignment of customer requirements with capabilities


Management of new product development and introduction efforts:

Manage product development and improvement projects


Apply and systematically use the product development process:

Implement, monitor, operate and recommend modifications to PACE as appropriate


Support sales team to enhance probability of winning business, understanding customer needs:

Support early-on in development of account relationship (prove depth of expertise and product relevance to customer needs)
Support at critical milestones of a customer program
Collaborate with sales to gather customer input and gain customer insights that lead to new product opportunities


Product marketing:

Define market positioning of products and set pricing strategy, in order to gain customer acceptance, market share objectives and long term profitability
Develop and exploit synergies between product management and product marketing; provide guidance to product marketing team during product launch phase


 Product life cycle process:

Manage collaborative cross-functional product development and post-qualification programs that lead to high market acceptance, customer satisfaction, and total profitability
Enable cross-functional alignment and investment decision-making on strategic development programs and portfolios
Manage definition and adherence to a cross-functional product life-cycle management (PLM) process that ensures high-quality and repeatable new product development performance


Strategic planning:

Develop strategies with Technology Strategy and Engineering groups that effectively and coherently invest resources into new technologies and products
Provide market and competitive input to business strategy and development activities


Interface with Operations, Quality Groups:

Work with Supply Chain groups to maximize product-line P&L while also meeting strategic objectives
Lead responsive post-qualification critical program management of customer issues leading to customer satisfaction and profitability.
Define, maintain, and improve Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) process