Continuous Improvement - EMEA Regional Leader

About the role

The Continuous Improvement - EMEA Regional Leader is a senior individual contributor reporting directly to the EMEA Sr Operational Excellence Director. It is the cornerstone of Pillar 3 - Lean Management within Vertiv's EMEA Operational Excellence organization, covering 10 manufacturing plants across the region. The role drives the deployment, standardization and sustained adoption of Lean and Continuous Improvement methodologies, builds a living Lean culture through hands-on coaching and site assessments, and develops self-sustaining local CI capability at each plant. The position is based at one of Vertiv's EMEA plants or offices, with about 50% travel across EMEA manufacturing locations; proximity to an international airport is beneficial.

Key responsibilities

• Deploy a standardized Lean Management System across all 10 EMEA sites, define minimum requirements for tools, cadence and governance, and implement core Lean tools such as Kaizen, VSM, 5S/6S, SMED, TPM, pull/kanban and visual management.
• Create a site-by-site Lean deployment roadmap and standardized playbooks and toolkits, and lead VSM workshops, SMED initiatives, Kaizen events and visual management rollouts.
• Build CI capability by developing plant-level CI Champions, Lean Coordinators and Lean Leaders, delivering Lean training and providing hands-on coaching and mentoring.
• Maintain a Lean maturity assessment model, assess all 9 EMEA plants at least annually, and own a detailed CI roadmap for each site, benchmarking against global and best-in-class sites.
• Drive year-over-year OEE improvement, reduce lead times and inventory, and track and report CI savings and KPI trends.
• Run an EMEA CI network for knowledge sharing, identify lighthouse plants and drive horizontal deployment of proven improvements.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Operations Management or a closely related technical discipline; Master's degree preferred.
• Lean Practitioner or Lean Expert certification; Six Sigma Green Belt minimum (Black Belt preferred); TPM Facilitator certification strongly preferred.
• 7-10+ years of progressive experience in Lean, Continuous Improvement or Operational Excellence in complex, multi-site manufacturing environments.
• Proven track record of leading hands-on Lean transformations and of building and coaching CI teams and site-level Lean leaders.
• Fluency in English; additional European languages strongly preferred.

Required skills

• Proficiency in performance data analysis and KPI tracking (Excel, Power BI)
• Familiarity with MES data and its use for Lean problem-solving and OEE analysis