Manish Kothawade, 39
Plant Quality Manager
Lear Corp.
Hammond, IN, United States
What Makes Manish an Engineering Leader
Manish is plant quality manager at Lear Corporation’s Hammond, Indiana, facility, where he leads quality operations for Ford Chicago seating programs. In just over two years, he has contributed to three automotive standards work groups—covering IATF 16949 Rev. 2, IATF customer-specific requirements and AIAG CQI-39—had three articles accepted in Quality Progress, and built software tools being evaluated for global deployment across Lear’s plant network.
An ASQ Senior Member with 16 years of manufacturing experience, Manish holds Certified Quality Engineer, Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence, Certified Supplier Quality Professional and IATF 16949 Lead Auditor certifications. He represents a new generation of plant quality professionals: practitioner, researcher, standards contributor and builder.
Leadership & Industry Contributions
When Manish joined Lear Hammond in March 2024, the plant’s IATF 16949 surveillance audit was approaching within the year. He immediately assessed each requirement against the plant’s actual performance, identifying gaps in corrective-action discipline, supplier-quality responsiveness and process documentation.
Manish led a cross-functional improvement effort involving production, maintenance, engineering and human resources. The 2024 surveillance audit resulted in zero nonconformances. He then sustained and strengthened the quality management system through 2025, leading the plant to zero nonconformances again during the more rigorous recertification audit.
Achieving zero nonconformances across two consecutive IATF audit cycles, including a full recertification, is rare in the Tier 1 automotive industry and reflects disciplined, plantwide leadership extending well beyond the quality department.
Manish is an ASQ Senior Member and holds CQE, CMQ/OE, CSQP and IATF 16949 Lead Auditor certifications. Three of his articles have been accepted in Quality Progress, and two manuscripts are under revision at the Quality Management Journal.
He has been an invited contributor to three AIAG/IATF standards work groups: IATF 16949 Rev. 2, Sections 8.5–8.7; the IATF Customer-Specific Requirements Work Group alongside Ford, GM and Geely; and the AIAG CQI-39 Assembly Assessment Work Group. His participation has been attested by the International Automotive Oversight Bureau.
Manish also built and donated the IATF 16949/ISO 9001 Memory Jogger, ISO 14001 EMS Memory Jogger and Lear Containment Tracker to Lear’s global network. In addition, he created and delivered Copilot AI training for Lear’s North American quality audience.
Why Manish Chose This Career
Manish entered the quality field in India in 2009 because it was an available opportunity during a global recession. He stayed because quality is, at its core, an engineering challenge that never repeats itself.
Diagnosing a defect requires the same structured thinking a control engineer applies to a system fault: isolating variables, tracing root cause and verifying that a correction holds. Owning a quality management system requires the mindset of a systems architect, because every process connects to another and a failure in one area can propagate throughout the system.
Sixteen years later, no two problems have been identical. For Manish, that continual challenge is the most important condition a career can offer.
