Manager - NPI Engineering, Finish Development

Location: Onsite 4 days/week in Kohler, WI

Opportunity

The Manager - NPI Engineering, Color/Finish Development serves as the technical and organizational leader responsible for the industrialization of advanced decorative, functional, and Color, Material & Finish (CMF) technologies across Kohler's product portfolio. This role leads Color/Finish development activities from concept through commercialization, ensuring design intent is translated into scalable, robust, and cost-effective manufacturing processes.

The position acts as the primary integration point between Styling, Product Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, and external technology partners to develop breakthrough finish capabilities, accelerate innovation, and deliver successful product launches. The leader is accountable for manufacturing readiness, process capability, risk management, and continuous advancement of Kohler's finish technologies and competitive differentiation.

Key Responsibilities:

Color/Finish Technology Development & Industrialization

• Lead development and commercialization of decorative and functional finish technologies across faucets, showering, sanitary, and premium product categories.

• Drive advanced process development activities from proof-of-concept through production implementation.

• Establish scalable finishing processes that meet performance, quality, sustainability, and cost objectives.

• Evaluate and implement emerging technologies, coatings, materials, and application methods that enhance product differentiation and customer value.

• Develop manufacturing readiness strategies for new finish platforms and innovations.

New Product Integration Leadership

• Provide NPI leadership for finish-related product launches and innovation initiatives.

• Ensure manufacturing requirements are incorporated early through Design for Manufacturability (DFM) principles.

• Lead risk identification, mitigation planning, and launch readiness reviews.

• Drive successful transfer of finish technologies into stable production environments.

• Establish launch metrics, capability plans, validation protocols, and production ramp-up strategies.

Cross-Functional Business Partnership

• Partner closely with Industrial Design, Product Engineering, Marketing, Program Management, and Operations teams.

• Collaborate with suppliers, technology partners, and research organizations to expand color/finish capabilities.

• Provide technical leadership during design reviews, innovation workshops, and product development gate assessments.

• Organizational Leadership & Capability Building

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing Finish Development engineering team.

• Establish technical standards, best practices, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms across global NPI organizations.

• Build succession bench strength and strengthen finish engineering expertise across the enterprise.

• Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, experimentation, and continuous improvement.

• Ensure operations & product competitive benchmarking of our development methodologies, production/process competitors and product competitors

Manufacturing Excellence & Continuous Improvement

• Identify opportunities to improve quality, reliability, productivity, and cost performance of finish operations.

• Champion Lean, Six Sigma, and structured problem-solving methodologies.

• Standardize finish development practices globally where appropriate.

• Capture and institutionalize lessons learned from product launches and process development initiatives.