Production Flow & Quality Lead

Production Flow & Quality Lead Our banner, Blue Nile, is part of Signet Jewelers, a purpose-driven company who believes love inspires love and whose mission it is to enable all people to Celebrate Life and Express Love. Signet Jewelers is also a “Great Place to Work-Certified™” company. Innovation and brilliance – two things that set us apart. Join us! The Production Flow & Quality Lead supports the daily performance of an assigned manufacturing cell by controlling the movement, status, priority, and quality verification of customer orders. Reporting to the Production Supervisor, this role converts the daily production plan into disciplined work-flow, ensures orders arrive complete and ready for the next operation, performs authorized incoming and in-process quality checks, and provides immediate feedback when a defect or process abnormality is found. This is a hands-on floor leadership role without direct reports. The Lead coordinates work and influences daily execution within priorities established by the Production Supervisor. The role does not replace craft self-inspection, assume the Supervisor's people-management accountability, or override Quality Assurance standards and final acceptance authority. Its purpose is to make flow and quality conditions visible, keep defects close to their source, and help the cell respond before problems become queues, rework, or missed customer commitments. Responsibilities: • Participate in the daily cell meeting and translate the Supervisor's production priorities into clear order sequencing, assignment, movement, and follow-up throughout the shift. • Receive, scan, sort, stage, assign, collect, and distribute work orders in accordance with the production plan, FIFO and priority rules, established routes, and standard operating procedures. • Maintain accurate real-time order status, location, ownership, routing, and completion information in factory systems and visual controls; immediately investigate missing, stalled, misrouted, or aging work. • Confirm each order has the required components, documentation, specifications, approvals, and system information before release to the next operation; resolve or escalate gaps rather than passing incomplete work downstream. • Monitor cell WIP, input, output, queue age, schedule risk, and due-date performance; alert the Production Supervisor early when demand, capacity, material, technical, or system conditions threaten the plan. • Coordinate with Jewelers, Setters, Polishers, Production Supervisors, Order Processing, CAD, Quality Assurance, Shipping, and other partners to remove flow barriers and protect customer commitments. • Protect high-value and custom orders through disciplined handling, positive job identification, traceability, and compliance with all security and product-control requirements. Quality at the Source: • Perform incoming and defined in-process inspections only within the role's documented training and certification, using current specifications, visual standards, samples, and approved inspection methods. • Verify that work entering the cell meets established acceptance criteria; identify and contain nonconforming work before it is accepted into the cell or transferred to the next operation. • Return defects to the responsible operation promptly and provide specific, factual, and respectful feedback at the point of discovery so correction and learning occur close to the source. • Record defects, rework, inspection results, disposition, and recurrence accurately using approved defect codes and systems; preserve traceability and escalate uncertain conditions rather than making unsupported acceptance decisions. • Support craft self-inspection and successive checks by reinforcing standards and making abnormalities visible; do not perform checks in a way that transfers quality ownership away from the craftsperson who produced the work. • Immediately escalate suspected product escapes, repeated defects, unclear criteria, high-value risk, or conditions outside certification to the Production Supervisor and Quality Assurance. • Partner with Quality Assurance on certification, calibration, audit readiness, inspection-plan updates, defect interpretation, and adherence to independent product-acceptance requirements. Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement: • Use visual management and daily performance data to identify queues, excess movement, batching, repeated touches, defects, rework, and other barriers to flow and first-pass yield. • Participate in structured root-cause analysis and countermeasure development with the Production Supervisor, craftspeople, Quality Assurance, and Process Improvement; verify that assigned actions are completed and sustained. • Maintain and improve standard work for allocation, movement, status control, inspection, containment, and escalation; identify differences between the documented process and actual floor conditions. • Contribute practical improvement ideas, support trials and pilots, and share recurring defect and flow patterns during daily management reviews. • Treat abnormalities as information to be understood, not hidden or worked around; resist informal expediting that disrupts the production plan unless the Supervisor authorizes a priority change. Leadership and Respect for People: • Lead through credibility, consistency, service, and follow-through; coordinate work without relying on positional authority and escalate unresolved conflicts to the Production Supervisor. • Communicate priorities, standards, defects, and risks clearly and professionally; listen to the people closest to the work and involve them in understanding problems and developing solutions. • Provide feedback without blame or public embarrassment while maintaining firm expectations for standard work, accurate information, quality, and timely response. • Build trust across production and support functions by applying rules consistently, avoiding favoritism, protecting confidentia