Project Manager - Japanese language needed

**Requires 2-3 weeks of onsite travel to Japan per quarter.


ENGAGEMENT DETAILS
Full-time assignment across the Explore, Realize and Deploy phases, with sustained on-site presence at the Japan sites during validation workshops, integration testing, cutover and hypercare. Reports to the program sponsor and steering committee, leading the workstream leads and working alongside client business SMEs, client IT and corporate global SAP governance.


TOP 4 SKILLS FOR THIS ROLE
1. Full-lifecycle SAP S/4HANA program delivery — leading a multi-workstream, multi-plant manufacturing implementation from Explore through Realize, Deploy, cutover and hypercare.
2. Scope discipline and gated governance — enforcing standard-first and clean-core delivery, holding every enhancement behind its conditions precedent, and defending scope against over-customization.3. Japan and global stakeholder leadership — running steering-committee governance and decision requests across local business SMEs, local IT, corporate IT and the delivery organization, across time zones and cultures.
4. Manufacturing transformation and adoption — shop-floor and MES cutover, plant-wave rollout, a six-month costing parallel run, and the change management to move an operation off paper and spreadsheets.

ROLE OVERVIEW
The Project Manager owns end-to-end delivery of a multi-year SAP S/4HANA manufacturing transformation across four Japan plants and two divisions, spanning four workstreams — Production Planning & Detailed Scheduling, Manufacturing Execution, Quality Management and finished-goods Actual Costing — on three platforms: SAP S/4HANA as the digital core, SAP Digital Manufacturing for shop-floor execution and machine connectivity, and SAP Business Data Cloud with SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP BTP for analytics and clean-core extensions. The program retires three legacy point tools and moves a paper-, Excel- and point-tool-based operation onto real-time, traceable standard SAP process. The defining challenge is scope governance rather than configuration management: delivery is deliberately standard-first, every custom object is gated behind conditions precedent, and the largest identified program risk is over-customization — rebuilding legacy shop-floor lot logic one-for-one inside SAP. Holding that line is a core accountability of this role.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
• Own the integrated program plan, budget, resourcing and critical path across all four workstreams and three platforms; sequence Explore validation workshops, Realize build, and phased Deploy by plant wave.
• Operate the gating process as a hard control — no custom development starts until its conditions precedent are met, and every extension lands on SAP BTP rather than modifying the core — and manage the WRICEF backlog end to end, driving typing and sizing in Explore and challenging scope additions a standard alternative would satisfy.
• Run steering-committee and executive governance: prepare decision requests, drive closure of the open design decisions — batch and lot design, cavity-level scheduling master data, and the actual-cost allocation architecture — and report status, risk and benefit realization to sponsor level.
• Coordinate a tri-party resource model — local business SMEs by division and workstream, local IT for factory-automation and legacy-system ownership, and corporate IT for template alignment, clean-core governance and Basis — securing named commitments rather than nominal ones.
• Own program risk, issue and dependency management across the identified risk set — over-customization of lot logic, batch and long lot-number design, non-standard machine integration, actual-costing accuracy and key-person dependency — plus the prerequisites that condition delivery: edition and licensing decisions, equipment and PLC readiness, and master-data governance.
• Plan and govern the six-month finished-goods Actual Costing parallel run per plant wave through to finance-leadership sign-off, then own shop-floor cutover, multi-shift hypercare, legacy point-tool retirement and transition to run-state support.
• Lead change management and adoption — paperless-process training, documentation of logic currently held by individuals, sustained shop-floor engagement — and enforce delivery standards for design sign-off, test strategy, defect governance and auditable SOX / J-SOX documentation.

BATCH MANAGEMENT & TRACEABILITY EXPERIENCE — PREFERRED, NOT REQUIRED
The Project Manager will not configure batch functionality, but batch, lot and cavity-level traceability is the technical heart of this program and the source of its largest risk — a Project Manager who understands the following will govern scope far more effectively:
• Why lot and batch design is the program's critical path — it connects planning, shop-floor execution, quality and inventory, and an unresolved batch model blocks multiple workstreams at once.
• Enough working knowledge of batch genealogy, lot splitting and merging, and cavity-level traceability to tell a genuine standard gap from a request to replicate legacy behavior — and to challenge the latter in a design review.
• How the shop-floor control number maps one-to-one to the S/4HANA batch, so that scope conversations about the execution layer and the ERP core stay connected rather than being run as separate negotiations.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
• 12+ years of IT program and project management, including 5+ full-lifecycle SAP implementations as Project Manager or Delivery Lead, with at least 2 on SAP S/4HANA.
• Demonstrable ownership of a manufacturing or supply chain SAP program spanning multiple functional workstreams and multiple plants — not a single-module or single-site deployment.
• Proven scope-governance track record: running a formal gating or conditions-precedent process, with specific examples of enhancements you prevented or reduced by holding a standard-first line under business pressure.
• Strong command of program mechanics: integrated planning, critical-path and dependency management, resource and budget control, RAID discipline, and steering-committee reporting to executive sponsors.
• Experience leading distributed, multi-party delivery — client business, client IT, corporate IT and system integrator — across time zones, plus cutover and multi-shift hypercare leadership for an operational go-live.
• Organizational change management capability for a workforce moving from paper and spreadsheets to system-driven process, including training strategy and adoption measurement.
• Excellent written and spoken English with executive-level communication skill; formal project management credential (PMP, PRINCE2 or equivalent) and working fluency with SAP Activate.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
• Bilingual English/Japanese (business level) — preferred but not required (see Language Requirement below).
• Prior program delivery in Japan or with Japanese manufacturing clients, including familiarity with Japanese consensus-building practice and the patience it asks of a schedule.
• Experience rolling a global SAP template into a country operation, balancing corporate standards against genuine local requirements.
• Familiarity with SAP Digital Manufacturing, SAP BTP clean-core governance and SAP Analytics Cloud sufficient to challenge architecture and scope decisions credibly.
• Discrete manufacturing background — electronics, automotive or precision components — with exposure to traceability-driven quality environments; PMI-ACP, SAFe or SAP Activate certification.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT — BILINGUAL ENGLISH/JAPANESE PREFERRED, NOT REQUIRED
Fluent professional English is required for design documentation, deliverables and steering-committee communication. Business-level Japanese is a strong advantage — many process owners, shop-floor personnel and legacy-system custodians work primarily in Japanese, and much current-state documentation exists only in Japanese — but it is not a condition of appointment. Interpretation support, bilingual design documentation and pairing with bilingual business analysts are provided, and strong candidates will be considered regardless of Japanese-language ability.