Job Title: SAP Manufacturing Director
Duration: 12 months
Location: Remote (Riverside, California)
Job Description:
· Requires 2-3 weeks of onsite travel to Japan per quarter.
· LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT — BILINGUAL ENGLISH/JAPANESE PREFERRED, NOT REQUIRED
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.
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.
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
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