EVP – Risk and Resilience — Sterile Manufacturing Network

The mandate

A sterile-device network is managing capacity allocation and sterilisation-route planning across multiple contract providers. Several high-volume device families depend on external sterilisation, and the network requires validation, scheduling and transport coordination to maintain supply continuity and reduce concentration risk.

Operations has begun moving selected loads and building inventory. Commercial teams are receiving hospital escalation, while quality and regulatory leaders assess whether existing validations cover available chambers, sites and load patterns. The immediate response is necessary, but it could create a new concentration elsewhere or produce stock that cannot be sterilised, released or used before expiry. Business-continuity plans anticipated short outages, not a multi-month constraint affecting multiple products and countries.

The EVP – Risk and Resilience will own the integrated exposure and decision framework across supply continuity, sterilisation transfer, suppliers, logistics, inventory, regulatory commitments and customer allocation. Operations, quality, medical and regulatory functions retain their authority. The EVP must ensure that executive decisions reflect one view of patient need, validated capacity, time, cost and dependency and that temporary recovery does not become an unexamined permanent network.

The perimeter spans approximately 1,000 employees and material partners across Switzerland and the international manufacturing and hospital network. This urgent, unplanned appointment is on site in Zurich and reports to the Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor. It requires frequent supplier and site presence during the capacity transition.

Why this seat is open

Enterprise risk previously concentrated on financial, cyber and compliance topics, while supply resilience sat within operations. The sterilisation constraint crosses product, patient, supplier, regulatory and market decisions and revealed that no executive owns their aggregated consequence. The board has created the role to govern the current event and establish a durable resilience model.

What you will own

• Build the authoritative exposure view by device, market, hospital need, inventory stage, sterilisation route, validation status, shelf life and alternative capacity.
• Establish allocation and escalation principles with medical, quality, commercial and operations leaders where validated supply cannot meet all demand.
• Govern transfer to alternative chambers or sites, ensuring risk assessments, validation, packaging, residual, bioburden, transport and regulatory requirements are complete.
• Lead resilience decisions across a wider 1,000-person and partner perimeter without displacing functional control or creating a parallel operations organisation.
• Reassess critical suppliers and routes by patient impact, substitutability, recovery time and geographic concentration rather than annual spend alone.
• Control continuity scenarios and executive triggers for supplier recovery, prolonged curtailment, additional failure, product prioritisation and market restriction.
• Review contracts, insurance, capacity reservations and exit rights and negotiate improvements where commercial terms do not reflect critical dependency.
• Establish tested resilience for sterilisation, sterile barrier, specialist materials, release testing and transport across the broader network.

The first 12 months

• Days 1–90: Reconcile inventory, demand, validated capacity and supplier recovery evidence; stop plans based on nominal chamber capacity alone. Agree patient and hospital allocation rules, identify products requiring regulatory action and set board triggers for each scenario. Secure critical data, tooling and technical assistance from the constrained provider.
• Months 4–9: Validate and activate alternative capacity in sequence, monitor transport and release performance and renegotiate priority supplier provisions. Reduce avoidable pre-sterilisation accumulation and rebalance production to executable routes. Run a second-failure scenario before declaring the network stable.
• Months 10–12: Demonstrate sustained supply through the approved network, close temporary allocation and control measures where evidence allows and present a longer-term sterilisation footprint. Complete critical-supplier maps and resilience tests for connected dependencies and embed quarterly exposure decisions in portfolio and capacity planning.

What the board will measure

• Patient- and hospital-critical supply maintained or allocated under transparent, medically informed principles when full demand cannot be met.
• Alternative sterilisation capacity activated only after required validation and approval, with no hidden reliance on unqualified chambers, loads or routes.
• Inventory aligned to executable sterilisation and release, reducing aged work-in-progress, expiry and stranded product.
• Critical-supplier concentration and recovery risk reduced across sterilisation and connected sterile-flow dependencies.
• Scenario triggers used in real decisions, with board and customer communication updated before assumptions become outdated.
• Functional ownership preserved and emergency governance retired into a tested, sustainable resilience system.

The person

You are an EVP of risk or resilience, global supply or quality-risk leader, network executive or senior operations risk specialist with 22–28 years in medical devices, pharmaceuticals or another sterile regulated sector. You have led continuity through loss of a sterilisation, sterile-fill, critical-material or comparable qualified capacity. You have influenced at least 750 employees and controlled a risk, supply or continuity perimeter of at least CHF 250 million.

You understand validation and supply well enough to distinguish theoretical capacity from product-qualified, schedulable and releasable capacity. You have made allocation decisions under shortage, worked with medical and quality authorities and can explain how patient need, substitutes, geography and inventory informed the outcome.

Relevant backgrounds include sterile devices, implants, pharma, biologics or other products where a constrained qualified process affects market supply. General enterprise risk candidates must show direct operating-continuity depth. Operations candidates must demonstrate independent scenario challenge rather than ownership of the preferred recovery plan alone.

The role is on site in Zurich with extensive travel to suppliers and manufacturing locations. International candidates may qualify with relocation and European regulatory experience. The EVP must operate calmly under external uncertainty and refuse both false reassurance and unnecessary broad restriction.

Compensation and terms

The base compensation range is CHF 340,000–470,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation. Measures will cover patient continuity, validated transfer, exposure reduction, scenario quality and sustainable governance. This is a permanent appointment created urgently. Relocation and documented forfeited awards may be considered.

Confidentiality

The client, sterilisation provider, products, hospitals and capacity details are confidential. Names and operating detail will be released in stages after relevance is confirmed and the required agreement is in force. Applicants must not contact suppliers, regulators or hospital networks to infer the company.

Each response must contain no more than 49 words.