Ricardo Lucena

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT RICARDO LUCENA

Working at the last 27 years in the automotive industry, actually as Project Development Manager in Headquarters\' in Portugal in charge of parts from some of most exigent Customers as Audi (Q7/Q9) and Skoda (Kodiak/ Enyak), my last role was Quality Plant Manager working in Brazil with main OEMs and in 2020 in France supplying parts to Toyota, Stellantis and Renault Europe; we facing the scenario from growth in the quantity of sales parts +85%, with an increase of the injection machines of +5%, that were possible with the addition of huge automation and Lean Manufacturing techniques. During this period, approximately 140 new Molds were launched at this plant/suppliers, an Advanced Warehouse was developed to handle and store parts for our end customer, which handles 30% of finished products, and was implemented of Centralized Raw Material Feeding Station, all items add value to our productivities and targets, but which generated higher entropy in the production system, even with all this situation the team managed were done the maximum to maintain quality levels below 10PPMs and low levels of Internal Rejection, Strategies were set up with focus on retaining talent and bringing in new employees as a way to restructure the Quality department and this commitment was recognized by audits of the main OEMs (ex:Toyota) and system audits as IATF 16.949 certification.In order to be able to lead to achieve the results above, a whole learning path was necessary, which I share below because I think it is extremely important to build sustainable results over time.My career began in 1998 at Faurecia as a production operator in Palmela (Portugal), working in Metrology, QMS, SQA, Development Engineer, and Production Supervisor. In 2009 I joined the Volkswagen as a Quality Process Engineer. In 2010 I worked as team leader responsible to the quality of new vehicles supplies to the sites of Curitiba (Brazil) and Pacheco (Argentina). In 2012 I returned to VW Brazil as Quality Coordinator – Purchased Parts to work with development of series parts such as dashboards, door trims, seating, steering columns and security items such as brakes, springs, chassis. In 2016 I worked with Audi A3 Development Team in Brazil, and I have been invited to work at SMP Company as a Launch and Lean Manufacture Manager.During 9 years (2008 – 2017) I teaching at universities for graduation and post-specialization Quality Engineering, Project Development and Lean Manufacturing. During my time as a teacher I was able to make bridge between practice and theory, exchange experiences