Director, Practical Process Improvement (PPI) Business System (Continuous Improvement)
About The Position
As part of the Thermo Fisher Scientific team, you’ll discover meaningful work that makes a positive impact on a global scale. Join our colleagues in bringing our Mission to life every single day to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We provide our global teams with the resources needed to achieve individual career goals while helping to take science a step beyond by developing solutions for some of the world’s toughest challenges, like protecting the environment, making sure our food is safe or helping find cures for cancer. Position Summary The Director, PPI Business System is a senior leader responsible for accelerating Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Practical Process Improvement (PPI) Business System across global divisions and functions. This role drives Lean maturity, enterprise-wide continuous improvement, and a high-performance culture aligned with our 4i values. You will partner with senior leaders to strengthen the Lean Management System, lead high-impact transformation initiatives, embed digital and AI-enabled capabilities to drive operational efficiency, and ensure a strong pipeline of productivity improvements aligned with long-term business goals.
Requirements
- Deep expertise in Lean/TPS-based business systems and operational excellence.
- Exceptional financial acumen with the ability to quantify impact, build business cases, and drive P&L improvements.
- Experience implementing digital tools (AI/ML, RPA, process mining, analytics, digital workflows) to enable productivity.
- Strong strategic thinking, communication, facilitation, and stakeholder influence skills.
- Proven ability to lead complex organizational change and build high-performance, continuous improvement cultures.
- Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree (MBA, MS) preferred.
- Lean certification required; Master Black Belt strongly preferred.
- Significant experience (10+years) as a Lean/Operational Excellence leader with measurable results in continuous improvement.
- Experience leading teams and influencing in global, matrixed environments.
Nice To Haves
- Service operations experience is a plus.
Responsibilities
- Strategic Leadership Shape and deploy the enterprise PPI roadmap, ensuring alignment with growth, quality, productivity, and customer objectives.
- Drive the Digital PPI strategy, integrating automation, analytics, process mining, and AI/ML to deliver measurable business outcomes.
- Collaborate with functional and divisional leaders to prioritize initiatives that improve profitability and operational efficiency.
- Operational Excellence Lead complex, cross-functional improvement initiatives delivering results in cost, quality, delivery, and employee engagement.
- Strengthen the Lean Management System (tiered daily management, Gemba, leader standard work).
- Apply advanced Lean methodologies to transform end-to-end value streams.
- Partner with IT, Finance, and Operations to advance digital maturity and establish scalable process excellence standards.
- Maintain a robust productivity funnel targeting 125%+ of annual expectations.
- Capability Building & Culture Coach and develop Lean capability at all organizational levels.
- Build strong problem-solving capabilities (A3, RCA) to drive autonomy and speed of change.
- Lead PPI and Lean leadership training and promote best-practice sharing across sites and regions.
- Stakeholder Engagement Work with Operations, Finance, Quality, HR, Supply Chain, and Commercial teams to eliminate waste and optimize value streams.
- Integrate PPI into strategic planning and support enterprise-wide adoption.
Benefits
- A choice of national medical and dental plans, and a national vision plan, including health incentive programs
- Employee assistance and family support programs, including commuter benefits and tuition reimbursement
- At least 120 hours paid time off (PTO), 10 paid holidays annually, paid parental leave (3 weeks for bonding and 8 weeks for caregiver leave), accident and life insurance, and short- and long-term disability in accordance with company policy
- Retirement and savings programs, such as our competitive 401(k) U.S. retirement savings plan
- Employees’ Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) offers eligible colleagues the opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Number of Employees
5,001-10,000 employees
