Project Manager, Change Leader

Hayward Holdings Inc. (NYSE "HAYW") is one of the leading manufacturers of residential swimming pool equipment in the world, with a significant presence in the commercial pool market that is continuously growing. Hayward designs, manufactures, and markets a full line of residential and commercial pool and spa equipment including pumps, filters, heating, cleaners, salt chlorinators, automation, lighting, safety, flow control and energy solutions at our company owned facilities. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Hayward also has facilities in Tennessee, Arizona, and Rhode Island, Georgia, as well as Canada, Spain, France, Australia, and China.

The Change Leader is a Project Manager responsible for Hayward's portfolio of product engineering sustaining opportunities. These opportunities range from larger projects requiring full project management support from the Change Leader to routine product changes to support operations. The role is responsible for maintaining, implementing, and managing the front-end of the global product improvement process from opportunity identification and definition through disposition and prioritization. An efficient and effective process balances project delivery cycle-times meeting customer requirements, ensuring all product requirements are met, and facilitating quality portfolio decisions with respect to resource and capital deployment. This role will work with stakeholders and engineering resources from all of Hayward's North American sites.

At any given time, Hayward manages a portfolio of ~300 individual product improvement opportunities and is simultaneously overhauling and upgrading its product change management processes and related systems.

Key strategic skillsets include:

• Project Management - lead initiatives driving key sustaining and regulatory changes, coordinating teams and priorities, while managing time, cost and budget.
• Stakeholder management - a subset of product improvement opportunities carries heightened technical risk, and/or significant capital commitment. The Change Leader is responsible for defining decision-making processes and leading regular cross-functional engagements with senior resource managers and budget holders.
• Organizational change management -the Change Leader will play a major role implementing improved global processes and transitioning the enterprise to new ways of working. Key skills include establishing goals and defining success, crafting and communicating a clear and compelling vision and case for change to multiple levels across the organization, and coaching and supporting process practitioners.
• LEAN management - LEAN methodologies are core to Hayward's enterprise improvement journey. The successful Change Leader will "lead from the front" leveraging LEAN tools and proactively reinforcing Hayward's LEAN culture.

In addition to process definition and implementation, the Change Leader is tasked with identifying and defining supporting system requirements including enhanced tool capabilities and automation. End-to-end processes will harmonize Engineering data generated from Teamcenter AWC PLM through the operations and supply chain implementation in multiple MES/ERP systems.

Major Responsibilities:

Project Management

• Lead cross-functional sustaining, VAVE, regulatory, quality, supply chain, and product improvement projects from opportunity identification through implementation and closure.
• Manage project scope, schedule, budget, resources, risks, and dependencies to ensure successful delivery against business objectives and customer requirements.
• Drive prioritization and execution of a diverse portfolio of engineering change opportunities, balancing business value, technical complexity, resource constraints, and organizational priorities.
• Facilitate collaboration across Engineering, Operations, Quality, Sourcing, Manufacturing, Product Management, and Supply Chain teams to achieve project goals and resolve issues.
• Lead evaluation and implementation of cost reduction, value engineering, product reliability, manufacturability, and compliance improvement initiatives while maintaining product performance and customer expectations.
• Establish and maintain project governance processes, including status reviews, risk management, change control, escalation management, and executive reporting.
• Identify, develop, and implement process improvements, automation opportunities, and best practices that improve efficiency, visibility, and overall project execution effectiveness.
• Support enterprise transformation initiatives, including PLM, ERP, and change management process enhancements, ensuring successful adoption across the organization.

Create industry leading processes using latest available technologies to transform Hayward including:

• Investigation and Change Request Process to identify and document opportunities and define solutions.
• Enterprise Change Assessment process to assess internal and external requirements and validate change costs and impacts.
• Change prioritization and disposition process including Change Review Board for managing high-risk and high-impact opportunities. Define criteria for identifying opportunities requiring additional oversight. Address board membership, roles and responsibilities, and decision-making procedure.
• Success requires a process that scales effectively with opportunity scope and impact and includes robust portfolio management ensuring optimum deployment of resources.
• Identify and implement process key performance indicators and visual controls measuring conformance to key process elements.
• Analyze, compile and present both quantitative and qualitative data and recommendations, including configuration management process, compliance audits, and change management metrics.

Maintain, lead, and foster a "kaizen" mindset:

• Understand how processes operate relative to established requirements. Actively collaborate with cross-functional teams to enforce, analyze, and support adoption of CM requirements.
• Evaluate new technologies or methodologies and develop knowledge in these areas to apply to company projects.
• Identify opportunities for improvement in PMO and CM processes and lead continuous improvement activities.
• Participation in global improvement and standardization of CM processes through data driven decisions and requirement driven solutions.

Technology transition:

• Actively support transition from localized MRP systems to a successful global PLM and ERP.
• Develop and maintain playbooks for CM standards to be used in PLM, MRP and ERP migrations.
• Comply with and support the health, safety, and environmental programs, policies and procedures.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Comfortable working autonomously to resolve complex challenges where no precedent exists.
• Understanding of manufacturing environments, operations, and supply chain processes.
• Enterprise OCM experience, including driving organizational changes related to major technology efforts.
• Strong analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to see multiple perspectives.
• Ability to clearly communicate complex ideas patiently, in a transformative environment.
• Ability to clearly articulate messages to a variety of audiences, establish and maintain relationships.
• Strong organizational skills, ability to work on multiple projects.
• Business process development and documentation experience.
• Prior experience working with engineering and/or manufacturing business systems and applications.
• Experience with MS Office applications including advanced excel.
• Working knowledge of PLM, MRP, MES, and/or ERP systems.

Education:

• B.S. or degree in an Engineering or Manufacturing related discipline.
• 5+ years of experience with Program Management or Engineering Configuration Management.
• In the absence of a degree 7+ years of related experience is required.

Travel and Commute:

• Travel is less than 10%.
• This position is located in North Kingstown, RI and is in office 5 days per week.

#LI-LS1