Product Innovation Manager, Automotive

Description

Are you a car enthusiast with at least 5 years of aftermarket work experience?    Are you interested in advancing your career in product development with an established and growing company?  Then the Product Innovation Manager at CRP might be perfect for you!

CRP is a 70-year old family/veteran owned business and is one of North America's leading suppliers to the automotive and industrial service markets, providing the top professionals in North America with the quality components and innovative solutions they need to do their job. The company provides some of the most recognized brand names in the automotive aftermarket, including REIN Automotive parts, AAE steering products, Pentosin technical fluids, and AJUSA engine parts. CRP Industries Inc. operates key remanufacturing and distribution centers throughout North America. As a third generation, veteran-owned family business, CRP is proud of their reputation for delivering Quality, Service, and Trust. 

CRP offers a comprehensive total rewards package that includes:

· Health and Welfare benefits beginning the first of the month after your hire date

· Wellness programs

· Paid Time Off – 18 days per year, starts accruing from day one!!!

· Great people who live our Values!

Purpose:  Under the leadership of the Product Development Director, this role is responsible for driving the development process of innovative products and first to market repair solutions from idea to implementation to ensure they meet customer expectations, commercial feasibility and compliance with Federal Regulations.   

Essential Functions:

  · Collect innovative product ideas through research, feedback, and experience 

Initiate and lead brainstorming with engineering and prototyping resources (feasibility study)

· Perform comprehensive product, product application and OE and competitive cross reference research in automotive electronic catalogs

· Develop networks to gather market trend, price, technical development, competitive product research across all relevant sales channels (distributors, retail, e-tail, repair shops, consumers); ears to the ground, anticipating future needs and wants of specialized repair technicians

· Attend customer, industry (trade show) and technical training events, including repair shop visits to represent CRP Automotive and build and maintain relationships with customers and repair shops alike

· Product Lifecycle Management including new parts setup, BOM setup and obsolescence management

· Global product sourcing to CRP quality standards; including vendor management and identifying potential new vendors 

· Technical support for writing marketing copy, preparing creative product exhibits, various channels of customer communication and presenting product related technical trainings, both internally and externally

· Continuous improvement of job-related tasks: implement automation where it is beneficial to ensure data accuracy and improving speed to market

· Participate in web scrape preparations and scrape result analytics to support product development process and gap analysis

· Support initial and general forecasting, monitor purchasing efforts including relevant back orders, MOQs, vendor selection, in order to successfully birth new parts

Requirements

Requirements:

· Bachelor’s degree or minimum of 5 years equivalent relevant independent automotive aftermarket work experience (Tech, Master Tech, product management, aftermarket parts distribution)

· Strong focus on product quality is a must

· Creativity, affinity to product innovation/ improvement

· Understanding the value of providing innovative products as a repair solution to automotive techs

· Excellent Initiative & Organization

· Excellent Communication Skills, verbal & written

· Excellent Leadership Skills & People Skills

· Strong interpersonal skills and excellent analytical abilities are expected

· Project Management skills are desired

· Ability to work independently, in a team as well as with other teams is expected

· Strong interdepartmental communication through knowledge and approachability

· Proficiency in Windows, Microsoft Office (including Access) and Internet Navigation

· Automotive enthusiast at and outside of work hours desired

· Positive, Infectious “Can Do” attitude desired

· Knowledge of automotive aftermarket specific data specifications like OEM parts catalogs, ACES, PIES, PaDB, PcDB are a benefit, the desire of continuous learning through automotive programs and certifications is expected.

· Knowledge of product related packaging solutions a plus

· Budgeting skills, general understanding of P&L, P&L impact and margin calculation expected

· Ability to travel nationally as well as internationally