Global Lean Director

Johnson Controls • Glendale, AZ

6d • $156,000 - $235,000

About The Position

At Johnson Controls, we are transforming the built environment through innovation, operational excellence, and a relentless focus on continuous improvement. You will play a critical leadership role in shaping and accelerating our enterprise Lean transformation across the organization—driving strategy, building capability, and delivering sustainable business results at scale. This role is designed for a seasoned Lean leader who thrives in complexity, partners confidently with senior executives, and leads transformation through people, systems, and culture—not tools alone. The Global Lean Director is a senior‑level expert responsible for designing, driving, and sustaining Lean transformation across Johnson Controls’ enterprise. This leader brings deep mastery in transactional and operational Lean systems and plays a critical role in embedding Lean thinking into how the organization engages customers, accelerates growth, and delivers value across end‑to‑end value streams.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Quality, Engineering, or related field.
• Minimum 10–15 years of experience in Continuous Improvement across multiple business domains.
• Significant experience leading enterprise business transformations with recognized business and customer impact.
• Demonstrated leadership capability, strong business acumen, and ability to align change management priorities.
• Strong communication and presentation skills; ability to establish rapport with leaders, customers, and peers.
• Proven analytical and systems‑thinking capability with end‑to-end solution design.
• Excellent facilitation and strategic‑thinking skills.
• Experience leading, training, and coaching Lean and Six Sigma methodologies.
• Mastery of Lean systems, cultural transformation, and change leadership.
• Proactive risk management and issue‑resolution skills with appropriate escalation.

Responsibilities

• Provide visionary leadership, setting strategic direction for Lean across the global enterprise.
• Align strategy with daily operations using Hoshin Kanri and Lean Maturity Models , ensuring consistent execution across regions and functions.
• Oversee as directed the Lean Business System, methodologies, tools, and standard work; establish governance structures, performance dashboards, and sustainment mechanisms.
• Partner closely with executive and senior leadership to drive strategic growth and operational initiatives.
• Serve as a liaison between executive leadership and key stakeholders, enabling transparent and effective communication.
• Establish, deploy, and curate enterprise Lean standards, including methods and tools.
• Identify and mitigate risks impacting customer experience, revenue, and long‑term performance.
• Coach and develop Lean Associate Directors and senior leaders to model Lean behaviors and teach advanced Lean concepts.
• Define, design, and implement Lean methodologies across value streams.
• Identify key value drivers and provide practical tools to improve speed, quality, alignment, and customer outcomes.
• Support vertical and horizontal integration across functions.
• Lead critical, large‑scale improvement initiatives aligned to enterprise strategy
• Apply Lean methods to sales, quoting, order‑to-cash, and customer‑facing processes.
• Conduct and manage Lean training sessions across organizations.
• Perform root‑cause analysis to identify improvement opportunities and recommend technology and process solutions.
• Facilitate Obeya rooms, value stream mapping, Kaizen workshops, Daily Management installations, and action‑plan execution.
• Enable global synergies through best‑practice sharing and standardization.
• Partner with executive, regional, and functional leadership to deliver tangible improvements in performance.
• Mentor improvement leaders to accelerate results and strengthen a culture of continuous improvement.
• Identify process improvement opportunities and lead standardization efforts.
• Conduct training and workshops that balance Lean theory with practical application.
• Foster innovation by introducing new CI techniques, methodologies, and tools across the CI community.
• Oversee Lean maturity assessments and roadmap development.

Benefits

• This role offers a competitive Bonus plan that will take into account individual, group, and corporate performance.
• This position includes a competitive benefits package.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees