Vice President Lean - Americas

Johnson Controls•Glendale, CA

About The Position

The Vice President, Lean – Americas is the owner of Lean strategy, deployment, and results across the Americas region. This role serves as the authority for the Lean Business System across Americas, driving region continuous improvement, operational excellence, and cultural transformation aligned with corporate strategy. As a trusted partner to the C-suite and regional leadership, the VP Lean leads large-scale transformation initiatives, builds organizational capability, and ensures disciplined execution of Lean principles to deliver measurable business outcomes. This leader acts as the engine of continuous improvement across the region, embedding Lean thinking into strategy, governance, and daily operations. This leader reports into the Global VP- Lean Business System – Field, Shared Services & Functional Teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Quality, Engineering, or a related field.
Minimum 7-10 years of experience in Continuous Improvement.
Experience leading business transformation projects - track record of delivering tangible, recognized business & customer results.
Demonstrated leadership capability, strong business acumen, ability to align change management approach to business needs.
Strong communication and presentation skills.
Ability to establish rapport with leaders, customers and peers.
Proven analytical and systems-thinking: design & deployment of end-to-end solutions that exceed requirements.
Excellent facilitation and strategic thinking skills.
Experience in leading, training, and coaching Lean and 6Sigma methods & tools.
Demonstrated capability in team building, coaching, and effective collaboration.
Proactive risk management and issue resolution skills with appropriate escalation practices.

Responsibilities

Serve as the regional executive leader for Lean and Continuous Improvement across the Americas, accountable for business impact, capability maturity, and cultural adoption.
Define and execute the regional Lean strategy and roadmap, aligned to global priorities, with clear outcomes, milestones, and success metrics.
Sponsor and govern high‑impact, region‑wide transformation and problem‑solving initiatives aligned to enterprise value creation.
Drive execution discipline, removing barriers and course‑correcting to ensure strategic objectives are realized.
Facilitate executive alignment, decision‑making, and accountability around Lean priorities and transformation outcomes.
Represent the Americas in global Lean forums, ensuring alignment, best‑practice sharing, and two‑way learning.
Embed Lean thinking into daily management systems and leadership behaviors, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Scale CI methodologies, digital enablers, and advanced problem‑solving techniques to accelerate performance improvement.
Identify and mitigate enterprise and operational risks related to process performance, execution, and capability gaps.
Build and lead a strong regional Lean leadership bench, coaching senior leaders, Lean practitioners, and process owners.
Oversee the design and delivery of Lean capability development and training across the region.
Drive standardization and best‑practice scaling to improve consistency, transparency, and accountability enterprise‑wide.
Partner with regional and functional leaders to deliver sustainable improvements in quality, cost, delivery, and performance.
Balance enterprise‑level strategic leadership with hands-on engagement in critical initiatives as needed.