Product Manager

Salzgitter Konzern•New Berlin, WI

4d•Onsite

About The Position

KHS is a subsidiary of Salzgitter AG and is a leading manufacturer of filling and packaging systems for beverages and liquid food. The Product Manager (PM) manages a particular KHS product line and delivers accurate, commercially competitive quotations for the company’s machine or conversion projects and supports the sales process with technical expertise.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Engineering or related field
5+ years’ technical experience (engineering or sales) with packaging machinery
3+ years’ experience in developing quotations for complex capital equipment
Equivalent combination of experience and education will be considered
Ability to travel up to 30% of the time.

Responsibilities

Reviews Requests for Quotes (RFQs) from Sales personnel or customers; analyzes and evaluates customer needs from customer specification sheets, drawings and application requirements.
Supports and participates in sales process including sales calls, presentations and qualification of customers; provides support and technical information for sales personnel in the field and management; may visit customer sites to assess environment and applications.
Develops and provides creative technical solutions for customer packaging problems; may provide engineered solutions which include conceptual layouts, diagrams, description of functions etc.
Specifies the proper machine, components and technology for customer’s application; collaborates with other departmental leaders to create technically and financially accurate project estimates; utilizing existing pricing structures; accesses information from a variety of sources for costs; interacts with other product specialists as needed.
Prepares cost estimates for project impact on customer’s line; explains technical functions of machinery and components; articulates competitive advantages of KHS line compared to competitive machines.
Prepares proposals and quotations or works with commercial administrative group; oversees order confirmation and executes risk reviews; gathers missing technical information and incorporates into quotation; serves as quotation guardian for product specialty; follows ISO procedures for sales activity.
Continues to build expertise on technical aspects of KHS product lines; shares product expertise with other departments.
Maintains reference information on product line, may keep track of technical updates from competence center.
May sell and manage retrofits, upgrades and conversions of capital equipment for installed equipment base including product expansion and development programs; manages received orders and contract obligations with supporting staff until machine acceptance.
Depending on product line, the Product Manager may plan, direct, and coordinate machine conversion projects for KHS equipment to ensure that resources are available and that the goals of the project are accomplished on time and within budget.
Maintains margin and pricing indices and product information that can be referenced on demand by sales personnel and management.
Works closely with engineering in Business Areas and Competency centers on product line development/new product definitions; collaborates with other functional areas on the commercialization process.
Tracks and analyzes customer needs, and proposal, sales order activity of the product line for management.
Use market information to analyze the product market; identifies market trends; provides information for new and emerging product variations, develops new product definitions.