Main purpose of the role:
- Global Ambient OEM R&D Strategy: Define and execute global Ambient OEM R&D strategy, driving effective execution of customer development and new product development projects globally
- Best-in-class OEM R&D: Ensure optimized product development costs, increased speed to market, high quality product specifications that meet customer needs, a robust new product improvement & development pipeline. Develop good relation, understanding and way of working with Ambient Branded BU R&D and GIC, and develop / deploy best in-class OEM R&D practices
- Commercial Collaboration: Ensure smooth and efficient coordination between project managers and R&D teams to ensure customer requirements are being met and consumer insights are flowing from commercial teams to NPD team. Find the right balance in customer driven projects, tenders, product improvements and NPD.
- Operational Collaboration: Facilitate seamless coordination with local R&D at plants throughout product development process, ensuring on-time and on-spec delivery of products from sample through to full production scale-up phases and successful commercialization
- Innovation Collaboration: Work closely with Global Innovation Center (GIC) and Branded R&D team for big-win, advanced, innovations and ensure constant communication cadence between GIC, Ambient Branded R&D, and Ambient OEM New Product Development team. Find clear big wins for value engineering product/production improvement to be more competitive on existing products and tenders coming up.
- People: Motivate, lead and challenge team members to reach / exceed BU and individual targets and objectives. Improve and sustain employee engagement scores for R&D team to be within the top quartile. Build longer term view/plan around people; prepare succession plans at different levels. Set a positive working culture within R&D team and with teams across Thai Union. Be an ambassador of one Thai Union Group thinking
Key accountabilities:
Set strategic direction
- Define and drive execution of Ambient OEM R&D strategy (incl. targets / KPIs) and strategic priorities, ensuring effective and efficient customer development projects and strong pipeline for new product development and value engineering of existing products.
- Oversee all ongoing BU R&D projects, intervene as-needed to manage customer development resources in exceptional cases (e.g., Discuss with customer development leads and commercial teams to manage timelines)
- Develop and own NPD R&D product roadmap; collect inputs from NPD team lead, GIC, Ambient OEM commercial team and Ambient Branded R&D as-needed to adjust roadmap targets and timings
- Set budget for Ambient OEM R&D Lead’s approval, targets; define budget allocation and overseeing overall R&D budget management
- Develop clear and compelling vision on packaging, with specific relevance for OEM, improving in either sustainability or cost competitiveness
Best-in-class OEM R&D
- Work with Category Customer Development Leads to ensure developed products meet customer briefs, including product specifications, development timelines and unit-cost requirements
- Work with NPD leads to proactively identify and deliver new products that fulfill customer needs within cost targets, are launched ahead of competition, and in alignment with Ambient Branded BU R&D
- Build and deploy best practices on OEM R&D (e.g., optimizing R&D process between commercial and R&D teams, designing customer brief templates to pass through information from customers to R&D teams)
Commercial collaboration
- Ensure smooth and fast coordination between project managers and R&D teams (e.g., through process mapping, clear RAPIDs, automation, etc.)
- Continuously improve service level to commercial team by collecting level of satisfaction and potential areas of improvement; translate into initiatives and collaborate with R&D team leads to implement initiatives
- Ensure clear and commercially aligned vision on big ticket value engineering EPD opportunities
- Ensure NPD team proactively gathers external market insights and collaborates with commercial teams to test new product concepts
- Drive sharing of best practices to be adopted and insights across all R&D specialists globally
Operational Collaboration
- Facilitate seamless coordination with plant teams throughout product development process, ensuring on-time and on-spec delivery of products from sample through to full production scale-up phases and successful commercialization
- Collaborate with plant team leads and R&D team leads to identify any pain points in the R&D and scale-up process, and develop solutions
- Promote Right First Time (RFT) working culture to de-bottleneck and improve efficiency/productivity, while keeping in mind of quality, cost, speed, and simplicity
- Develop programs focusing on production cost reduction
Innovation Collaboration
- Work closely with Global Innovation Center (GIC) and Branded R&D teams to develop NPD R&D pipeline and ensure constant communication cadence and insights sharing across innovation teams
People and leadership
- Motivate, lead, and challenge team members to reach/ exceed business unit targets and objectives
- Build a cohesive and collaborative Ambient OEM R&D team comprising members based in different countries; drive a positive working culture within the R&D team and with other teams across Thai Union
- Create culture to attract, develop and retain talent as well as drive employee satisfaction within the scope, in collaboration with HR
- Coach team on daily activities; proactively identify high potential talents in the team
- Drive to improve career development paths & performance mgmt. to enhance team motivation and retain quality talent
- Foster a culture of continuous learning and development to enhance employee skills and competencies
- Build longer term view/ plan around people, prepare succession plans at different levels
- Manage people budget for the Ambient OEM R&D function, in collaboration with HR
Desired candidate profile:
- Ability to lead and motivate Ambient OEM R&D teams, build a diverse and trust-based leadership team, and develop talent across multiple regions and time zones
- Strong proficiency in OEM R&D in terms of process and project know-how
- Ability to identify and analyze complex problems and develop effective solutions, and develop long-term strategic plans
- Demonstrates strong relationship management skills, ensuring all internal stakeholder needs (e.g., R&D and plant teams) are being met across different regions and categories
- Excellent communication skills to effectively convey commercial and technical information to team members, internal, and external stakeholders
- Proven capabilities to develop and promote a vision across Ambient OEM categories with respect to longer term development and the future development of sustainability needs on raw material as well as packaging within the R&D team
- Strong interpersonal skills to foster a culture of collaboration and effectively drive cross-functional collaboration
- Experience in managing large teams in multiple time zones and who are physically distant from each other
- Interest and experience in value engineering through production adjustments
- Travel required.
- Proficient in English (and French)
