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Transform and success or changing to succeed concept and leadership in business through innovation and evolution of ability as a crumpled paper transforming into a boat then a swan and a flying bird as a metaphor.

Lean Transformation

White Paper Lean Transformation

Lean Transformation – From Initiative to Culture

How can companies move beyond tools to anchor Lean deeply in their organization?
Sustainable lean transformation is only successful when it becomes a cultural shift, deeply embedded in leadership behavior, organizational structures, and daily routines.

The Staufen approach is based on three key building blocks:

Strategic Alignment, Performance System, and Leadership & Culture.
Together, they form the foundation for a transformation that moves beyond short-term efficiency gains and builds a continuous improvement mindset across the organization.

Your contact person
Nick Phillips Managing Director STAUFEN.USA Phone: +1 (336) 540-4953 E-Mail: nicholas.phillips@staufen.us

Nick Phillips

Managing Director STAUFEN.USA
With 20 years of experience in industry and consulting leadership roles, Nick is a Managing Director at Staufen and leads the US practice for industrial products. He helps New Product Development, Supply Chain and Manufacturing executives transform their people, processes, products and systems to generate focused P&L improvements. He has a proven track record of leading high performing teams and delivering value to his clients.

Nick has over a decade of consulting experience serving many of the largest Automotive, Aerospace & Defense and Energy companies in the world. He specializes in Product Lifecycle Management, Digitization and Operational Excellence.

While working at Deloitte Consulting, Nick founded and led the Model Based Enterprise and Digital Thread service offering, where he received the award for Innovator of the Year in 2021. While working at ABB, Nick helped create a global internal consulting group and was given the Presidential Award for transformation in ABB’s power transformer business. He is a Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt and holds an Automotive patent for mechanical engineering.

Nick earned his MBA from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and his Engineering degree from Virginia Tech. He is passionate about enabling efficiency, innovation, and growth in the industrial product sector and about building the next generation of business leaders in the Circular Economy.
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What does sustainable Lean Transformation really look like?

The white paper outlines why many lean initiatives fail: they are often driven as isolated projects, disconnected from overall strategy and lacking the leadership support necessary for sustainability. True transformation means creating a long-term, organization-wide shift in how value is created and how people work together.

To achieve this, Staufen proposes a transformation framework that leads organizations through four phases—Orientation, Planning, Implementation, and Stabilization & Further Development—with tailored interventions at each stage.

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Lean Transformation Framework

The Lean Transformation Model supports organizations in three critical dimensions:

Leadership & Culture: Developing leadership behavior that fosters trust, empowerment, and daily continuous improvement.

Strategic Alignment: Defining clear goals, prioritizing focus areas, and aligning the transformation roadmap with business objectives.

Performance System: Establishing lean processes, stable standards, visual management, and KPIs that drive performance and transparency.

The interaction between these three dimensions is what determines the long-term success of a Lean Transformation.

Key Lessons

  1. Many companies struggle to embed lean into the organization because they focus only on tools—not on leadership and culture.
  1. A structured transformation roadmap is essential to guide the change process over time.
  1. Building lean capabilities at every level ensures that improvements are not dependent on individual champions.
  1. Leadership behavior is the most powerful lever for embedding lean thinking into the company’s DNA.
  1. The combination of clarity (strategy), stability (processes), and consistency (leadership) creates the foundation for sustainable transformation.

Would you like to learn more? Request the white paper now free of charge!

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Your Experts for Lean Transformation

Do you want your company to be able to be robust, resilient and respond quickly to increasingly new requirements? Our consultants look forward to speaking with you in person and working with you! 

Your contact person
Nick Phillips Managing Director STAUFEN.USA Phone: +1 (336) 540-4953 E-Mail: nicholas.phillips@staufen.us

Nick Phillips

Managing Director STAUFEN.USA
With 20 years of experience in industry and consulting leadership roles, Nick is a Managing Director at Staufen and leads the US practice for industrial products. He helps New Product Development, Supply Chain and Manufacturing executives transform their people, processes, products and systems to generate focused P&L improvements. He has a proven track record of leading high performing teams and delivering value to his clients.

Nick has over a decade of consulting experience serving many of the largest Automotive, Aerospace & Defense and Energy companies in the world. He specializes in Product Lifecycle Management, Digitization and Operational Excellence.

While working at Deloitte Consulting, Nick founded and led the Model Based Enterprise and Digital Thread service offering, where he received the award for Innovator of the Year in 2021. While working at ABB, Nick helped create a global internal consulting group and was given the Presidential Award for transformation in ABB’s power transformer business. He is a Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt and holds an Automotive patent for mechanical engineering.

Nick earned his MBA from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and his Engineering degree from Virginia Tech. He is passionate about enabling efficiency, innovation, and growth in the industrial product sector and about building the next generation of business leaders in the Circular Economy.

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