MANAGER – MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT & INNOVATION (NAWALA)
Being in the business for over 17 years, MAS Active is a prestigious establishment in Sri Lanka focusing on Activewear, Athleisure, Performance wear and Men’s essentials. You are responsible for Identifying customers’ unarticulated needs and provide material technological solutions with a deep understanding of contributing variables, drive proposals through compelling communication and collaborative working with internal/external partners based on current development methods so as to meet the organizational objectives in a timely and profitable manner. Collaboratively innovate with internal innovation team whilst managing the project pipeline ensuring all projects and innovation initiatives are successfully accomplished.
Key Responsibilities:
- Networking and identifying potential unarticulated needs of customers and seek new innovative technologies to cater the requirements and create new business opportunities.
- Take ownership of the projects assigned, track the progress and manage the workload to ensure achievement of the project goals to deliver the output within the timelines.
- Networking and identifying potential external/internal partners and involve in creating necessary NDA agreements. Identify IP opportunities and initiate the required IP protection process.
- Investigate on material science and technology and explore new initiatives to apply the technologies brought into the existing projects. Conduct costing initiatives to commercialize the products.
- Provide strong technical input for raw material formulations to deliver enhanced performance of technologies.
- Facilitate inter-departmental coordination between Innovation, Design, Production and Technical of new products and processes by Cohesively working with internal cross functional teams such as product design & design & development to ensure the material flow and developments are carried out seamlessly.
- Responsible for the completion of customer specification by understanding customers’ profile, their consumer behavior quality and technical needs and trends/ buying patterns properly and ensure that there is a strong relationship maintained continuously and keep the team updated frequently for them to plan and organize in advance.
- Ensure to develop and deliver the new material concepts aligning with requirements of different customers and hand over for routine developments.
- Proactively identify all developmental costs such as design costs, Raw Materials Costs & Logistical Costs at the inception, so that consolidated reports can be generated in regard to Raw Material development.
- Critically assess the areas for improvements in the methods, applications and processes of the material developments and facilitate the team to ensure that they continuously work on improvements. Review the progress periodically, encourage/facilitate and recognize them appropriately.
- Analyse past consumption patterns and foresee future manning, machinery, consumable, third party testing, sample couriering requirements for different customer segments and prepare annual budgets with a proper justification.
- Constantly demonstrate good technical and managerial leadership & manage the team resources in the most effective & appropriate manner.
- Working with the Human Resource department support the manager should identify the strengths and weaknesses of team members and identify training needs so that their skills are tuned towards working towards the objectives of the organization.
- Periodically visit external exhibitions to navigate new suppliers and create collaborations with existing and new institutions which enables to create the pathway for strategic partnerships.
Qualifications:
- Degree in Fabric Technology
- 5-7 years industrial experience
- Knowledge on the systematic problem solving and decision making
- Team leadership
- Negotiation skills
- Analytical and presentation skills
Closing Date: 2024/01/06