Manager, Tooling
About Pandora
Pandora is the world's largest jewellery brand, specialising in the design, crafting and marketing of accessible luxury jewellery made from high-quality materials. Each piece is created to inspire self-expression, allowing people to share their stories and passions through meaningful jewellery. Pandora jewellery is sold in more than 100 countries through 6,800 points of sale, including more than 2,700 concept stores.
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pandora employs 37,000 people worldwide and crafts its jewellery using only recycled silver and gold. Pandora is committed to leadership in sustainability and has set out to halve greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain by 2030. Pandora is listed on the Nasdaq Copenhagen stock exchange and generated revenue of DKK 31.7 billion (EUR 4.2 billion) in 2024.
About Pandora Production Vietnam
Pandora’s new jewellery crafting facility is located in the Vietnam–Singapore Industrial Park III (VSIP III), about 40 km north of Ho Chi Minh City. When fully scaled, the state-of-the-art facility will produce up to 60 million jewellery pieces annually and employ around 7,000 craftspeople. It is powered entirely by renewable energy and built to LEED Gold certification standards.
Main purpose of the role:
To drive efficient tooling/jig/fixture, plastic injection mold, and stamping die development while leading continuous improvement initiatives across manufacturing processes to ensuring optimal productivity, quality, and cost performance.
Key accountabilities:
1.Tooling / Jig / Fixture; Mold & Die Development Management.
• Lead the development of tooling, jigs, and fixtures from testing and validation to be ensure readiness for mass production.
• Lead the transfer, installation, setup, testing, and qualification of plastic injection molds and stamping dies during the development phase, ensuring complete technical package handover to mass production.
• Lead and control the readiness of tooling, jigs, and fixtures, ensuring full alignment with production schedules to achieve the required timeline, capacity, and quantity.
• Drive the standardization and optimization of tooling designs to ensure scalability, repeatability, maintainability, and consistent manufacturing performance.
• Prepare human resource; annually budget CAPEX/OPEX planning.
2. Alternative Process Development & Scalability
• Ensure tooling for alternative manufacturing processes is developed, validated, and maintained to deliver reliable performance, stable production, and sustained operational readiness.
• Lead the validation new processes to ensure scalability, consistent quality, stable production output, and efficient operations under mass-production conditions.
• Lead and govern pilot runs and industrialization activities for alternative manufacturing processes, ensuring that all approved processes are validated, documented, and effectively transferred to mass production.
• Lead and govern the end-to-end in-house development of stamping techniques, from process and tooling design through manufacturing, validation, and implementation in production.
3. Machine & Equipment Efficiency Optimization
• Lead machine-performance monitoring and improvement for alternative manufacturing processes, focusing on equipment reliability, production stability, operational efficiency, and readiness for mass production(e.g.,MTTR, MTBF, utilization, OEE).
• Collaborate with Maintenance to ensure machine reliability and uptime.
• Implement improvements to reduce downtime, minor stops, and speed losses.
4. Continuous Improvement (Productivity)
• Lead continuous improvement initiatives across tooling and manufacturing processes, delivering measurable improvements in productivity, waste reduction, process efficiency, and cost optimization.
• Apply Lean and Six Sigma methodologies to identify and resolve process inefficiencies.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to plan and execute continuous improvement projects, ensuring measurable and sustainable improvements in manufacturing performance.
5. Team management
• Lead and drive team to achieve strategic expectation and goals.
• Provide constructive feedback and suggestions to the team
• Lead and govern the automation and alternative-process design project pipeline, ensuring that projects are properly reviewed, finalized, and aligned with approved manufacturing objectives, technical requirements, and expected benefits.
Requirement:
• At least 10 years of experience in Production Engineering, supported by strong technical expertise; experience of 5 years or more in the jewelry manufacturing industry is preferred.
• At least 5 years of experience in a managerial or technical leadership role.
• At least 5 years of hands-on experience in Mold and Die Development, or both.
• Ability implement technical solutions for automation machinery, molds, and dies.
• Experience in managing machine fabrication or engineering workshops.
• Coordinating activities across Engineering, Production, Quality, Maintenance, and other relevant functions.
• Strong knowledge: CNC, EDM, WEDM, and other mechanical workshop machinery.
• Experience in automation including mechanical and electrical machine design.
• Experience in the development of plastic injection molds and stamping dies.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder-management, and communication skills.