Strategic Lean Quality Leader

Industrial Electrical Components Manufacturer
Worcester, MA (west of Boston) metro area

The Ideal Lean Organization 

When most companies transition to Lean they seldom succeed with the single most critical aspect of their transformation: dumping their existing traditional siloed structure. Very few are actually able  to make the fundamental organizational change to value streams, which would allow them to make products in a one-piece flow, thereby delivering the best quality, lowest cost, and fastest response to customers.

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to be part of the senior leadership team in a company where people follow their True North as they work in an organization 100% organized around customer value streams?

If so, perhaps you’d like to explore this opportunity to join our client at the strategic team leader level (equivalent to C-Level in traditional organizations) in the role of Strategic Lean Quality Leader.

Our Client – Current State of Lean

Our client is a relatively small (under $50 million revenue) Northeast-based manufacturer of highly specialized electrical industrial components. While the company was originally founded with a traditional organization chart, the second generation of leaders figured out a number of years ago that everything had to change if the company were to become truly Lean. And that this would require transforming their people by asking them to dramatically change their thinking, including their most basic instincts about how to organize and do work.

Today the company is organized into value streams.  Value Stream Managers are directly responsible within the plant for increasing the ratio of value to non-value, eliminating waste in the overall supply chain from start to finish, for a defined product family; for ensuring that the value stream meets or exceeds customer requirements; and, at the enterprise-level, for eliminating waste throughout the whole value stream, often spanning several independent organizations (suppliers, inbound/outbound logistics, customers, etc.).

Value stream teams are structured as integrated product/process teams, organized into self-directed work groups, with teams focused horizontally on a linked set of activities along the value stream. Each product family team includes members with expertise in marketing, design, purchasing, tooling, manufacturing, industrial engineering, quality assurance, and customer satisfaction.

The teams each facilitate their own ongoing efforts to minimize waste via continuous improvement initiatives. And work teams themselves perform many of the indirect tasks associated with managing their work to deliver optimal results for the customer including: workspace layout, quality assurance, maintenance, setup, change-overs, and rebalancing workloads.

In this culture every single team member recognizes that A3 is a way of thinking and not just a tool, and yet indeed is, at the same time, the most powerful standard tool in the Lean bible for implementing every important project.

Does this sound like the kind of Lean Thinking organization you would like to join? Ask yourself:

·         Are you the kind of leader who can step back and view the organization and its value streams from a broad enterprise perspective?

·         Are you able to understand the key system constraints, and quickly spot critical process issues?

·         Can you concentrate on improving the value created by the whole system rather than focusing on sub-optimizing the parts of the supply chain?

·         Do you have exceptional leadership abilities and ability motivate individuals within the value streams to change – even if their individual areas do not personally benefit?

·         Do you make decisions based on data, not opinion?

·         Are you open to ideas from team members across the organization for improvement?

·         Do you understand the culture of a truly value stream-based organizational tructure?

·         Are you able to interact with customers and suppliers to inspire the development and implementation of win-win solutions which increase value for all stakeholders?

The Role 

As the Strategic Lean Quality Leader you will, in collaboration with your fellow Strategic Team members, the company’s Value Stream Leaders, and all team members, help the organization continuously move towards and sustain its True North Quality Target Condition – a world-class ISO-aware Lean quality system of principles and processes, mindset and culture.  The primary focus of this role is to help build and sustain robust quality processes into every value stream within the organization.

Details of the company’s True North Journey – the kata which defines our client’s method for learning, making decisions, and taking action – along with highly specific Quality Target Condition (TC), Value Stream TCs, Strategic Team Member TC and other TC blueprints – will be made available to interested and qualified candidates.

What You Bring to the Table 

·         Extensive, demonstrated success in helping grow and continuously improve a world-class, ISO-aware quality system and culture, in a discrete manufacturing organization of at least $50 million in revenue.

·         Exceptionally deep and broad, hands-on Lean leadership experience – a person who lives and works in alignment with the principles and practices of servant leadership and True North.

·         Extensive practical experience in coaching, developing and mentoring others utilizing Lean management processes and tools, especially kata and A3 thinking and problem solving.

·         BS/BA, with technical or engineering degree strongly preferred.

·         Desire and ability to relocate to the Worcester, MA metro area.

Please contact Adam Zak Executive Search for additional information.  

Adam Zak, the Lean Executive Recruiter
CEO, Adam Zak Executive Search
Barrington, Illinois
az@LeanRecruiter.com  http://LeanRecruiter.com
+1 847.304.5300