Lean Thinking has profoundly transformed the way industry is done over the past twenty-five years, but today it is no longer enough to apply isolated tools or initiate occasional improvement projects. In a context marked by volatile markets, digitization, and increasing attention to sustainability, a maturity leap towards the Lean World Class® is needed: the proprietary methodology developed by Bonfiglioli Consulting, which structures continuous improvement into 13 thematic pillars-from Cost Deployment to People Development to Environmental Energy Sustainability-each with chiare responsibilities, a maturation roadmap, and measurable results. The model integrates the digital dimension as an enabler of processes and recognizes sustainability not as a parallel theme but as an integral part of industrial performance. The goal is to build organizations capable of transforming improvement into a widespread and enduring competency by combining the strategic guidance of management with the empowerment of operational teams.
The Lean World Class® now represents the new paradigm of industrial improvement. For years, Lean Thinking has been the compass par excellence, but in a scenario marked by volatility, competitive pressure, technological innovation and environmental transition, it is no longer enough to apply individual tools or initiate isolated projects. A leap in maturity is needed: transforming Lean into a structured, measurable system capable of integrating performance, people, digital and sustainability. This is the heart of Michele Bonfiglioli's new publishing project: 25 Years of Lean Thinking the Italian Way, dedicated precisely to the evolution toward Lean World Class®.
There are ideas that remain current because they can change form without betraying their strength. Lean Thinking is one of them. In the past twenty-five years, it has radically transformed the way we think about work,the flows, waste, and customer value. It has taught businesses to look at production processes with different eyes, to make inefficiencies visible, to build method where before habits, urgency or improvisation prevailed. But precisely because it is a living paradigm, today Lean is called upon to take an additional step: staying true to its founding principles while opening itself to the great challenges of the present.
The question, then, is not whether Lean is still needed. It does serve. The real issue is another: how to make it fit a much more complex industrial environment than the one in which it was initially deployed. Today's companies face unstable markets, pressured supply chains, rising expectations for speed, quality and customization, as well as an increasing focus on sustainability and data quality. In this scenario, Lean can no longer be considered a simple collection of tools. It must become a system of industrial governance that is more robust, more disciplined, and more capable of generating lasting results.
Many companies claim to have embarked on a Lean path. And it is often true, at least in part. They have introduced practices of 5S, kanban, TPM, workshops kaizen, visual management. They have started improvement sites, perhaps even achieving concrete results. But therein lies one of the most widespread critical issues: the fragmented application of Lean. When improvement remains confined to isolated tools, small teams or non-integrated initiatives, knowledge does not consolidate and become a stable asset of the organization.
Based on the experience of more than 25 years of national and international projects, traditional Lean has shown its limitations not because it was weak in principles,but because it was adopted incompletely: often with strong initial energy, but without a structure capable of holding up over time; sometimes focused on individual cost areas, but not on the whole system; at other times still lacking a real link to economic impacts and internal skills growth. The result is familiar: visible but not consolidated improvements, good but not scalable initiatives, initial enthusiasm followed by slowdown. That is why “doing Lean” is no longer enough today. You have to build Lean organizations. And building them means transforming improvement into a widespread competence, a shared responsibility, a managerial discipline capable of surviving projects and taking root in everyday operations.
It is precisely from this need that the Lean World Class®, our proprietary methodology, was born. Not a break with Lean Thinking, but its most mature development: a model that keeps alive the principles of the Toyota Production System-value, value-based activities, flow, tense flow, perfection-and structures them in a more rigorous, organized and measurable way.
The major difference lies in the system logic. In Lean World Class® each area of improvement is manned by thematic pillars, each entrusted with a clear responsibility, with a maturation roadmap and measurable deliverables. Improvement is no longer left to the goodwill of individuals or occasional initiatives, but enters the organizational design of the enterprise. This means moving from a project culture to a method culture.
The heart of the system is widespread ownership. Responsibilities do not remain in the hands of specialists or a small group of facilitators, but directly involve line people, that is, those who live the processes every day and can really contribute to their improvement. This is a decisive transformation, because it shifts the center of gravity of change: from something that is ’implemented“ to something that the organization learns to practice.
One of the model's most interesting contributions is the overcoming of a dilemma that has always accompanied paths of transformation: should change be top-down driven or born from the bottom up? The answer proposed by Lean World Class® is clear: both directions are indispensable. In the beginning, strong management leadership is needed, able to set the vision, priorities, goals and resources. But for change to last, it must be absorbed into routines, behaviors, operational decisions, and widespread accountability.
This is where the model gains depth. Top management ensures direction and strategic coherence. Operations teams ensure rootedness, continuity and learning. In between, the system of pillars and governance creates the infrastructure that holds vision and action together. This balance makes Lean World Class® particularly relevant for all those companies that do not want to just "do a few improvement projects,“ but aim to build a stable and replicable competitive advantage.
The Lean World Class® is based on a pillar structure that covers business functions across the board. There are 13 Pillars:
.Each pillar presides over a critical area of performance and helps generate synergies with the others to move from a reactive to a proactive state.
In the Pillars, the Cost Deployment plays a central role, because it introduces a discipline often absent from improvement paths: the translation of losses into economic value. It is not enough to know where the waste is. It is necessary to quantify them, sort them, prioritize them, and fund interventions consistently. It is this step that makes improvement fully legible even from a managerial and financial point of view.
In the same way, Focused Improvement makes kaizen systematic, l"AutonomousMaintenance restoring facilities to stable basic conditions, the Professional Maintenance introduces evolved reliability logics, while the People Development confirms that the real driver of transformation remains skills growth. The message is simple but powerful:no lasting ecellency is built without people who are prepared, empowered, and involved.
Another distinctive element of the model is its articulation along a roadmap, which we suggest based on our three-year experience. The first year is devoted to the foundations: initial audit, definition of the plan, activation of the most standard-oriented pillars, safety and basic conditions. The second year gets to the heart of the system: extension to the more analytical pillars, introduction of digital flows, and first tangible results on the income statement. The third year is that of cultural maturity: automation of information flows, periodic audits, teams capable of acting autonomously, predictive approaches, and the consolidation of improvement as an organizational competency.
This time scan is more than just an operational sequence. It is a cultural stance. It tells businesses that excellence does not come from spot intervention, but from a progressive, disciplined and intentional path. In a time when many organizations are looking for shortcuts, this vision restores depth to the concept of transformation.
In its most advanced evolution, the Lean World Class® opens to the Lean & Digital World Class®, in which the digital dimension is treated as an enabler of improvement. Data collection, storage, analysis, and visualization become an integral part of the system, through a logic that, from the field, leads to the decision.
But the most important principle is another: Without data quality, there is no sustainable improvement. Fragmented, inaccurate or isolated data do not help to make better decisions. On the contrary, they generate noise, slow down choices and weaken the credibility of the system. This is why defining a sequence is very important: first build solid processes, then digitize them consistently, and only then engage more advanced applications, including artificial intelligence.
This reading is especially valuable today. In many enterprises the risk is not lack of technology, but excess of technologymal grafted onto fragile processes. Lean World Class® overturns this approach: it puts order before speeding up, creates foundations before scaling up, builds reliability before automating.
A further evolution of Lean applications concerns sustainability. The argument is stark: every waste is also environmental damage. Producing too much, handling unnecessarily, wasting energy, accumulating unnecessary inventory, generating rework or waste is not only economically inefficient; it is also environmentally unsustainable.
Hence a strategic message: Lean and sustainability are not two separate programs to be kept separate, but two sides of the same industrial approach. Improving efficiency also means reducing resource consumption, pollution, and emissions. And it is precisely in this convergence that Lean Thinking rediscovers an extraordinary relevance: not only doing more with less, but also avoiding doing what is not needed.
The book 25 years of Lean Thinking the Italian way recalls, in this area, specific tools such as the SPPM - Sustainable Product & Process Management method and the EES - Environmental Energy Sustainability pillar, which allows energy-environmental waste to be read with two universal metrics: euros and tons of CO2. This is a decisive step, because it takes sustainability out of the declarative dimension and brings it back into the concrete language of industry.
The book offers an integrated view of Lean not as a mere improvement toolbox but as the evolutionary basis of a new competitive paradigm, in which methodological rigor, economic measurability, skill growth, data quality and sustainability converge into a single system.
In other words, Lean World Class® is not just a model for working better. It is a model for making the enterprise stronger, more readable, more accountable, and more ready for change. And today, in a global scenario that rewards those who can combine productivity, resilience and vision, this is not a detail. It is a condition of competitiveness.
The book 25 years of Lean Thinking the Italian way accompanies the reader inside a decisive transition: from the application of traditional Lean to the evolution towards the Lean World Class®, to the integration of continuous improvement, digital and sustainability.
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The author of the book is Michele Bonfiglioli, an entrepreneur and CEO of Bonfiglioli Consulting, he has been working alongside entrepreneurs and managers in Italy and around the world for more than 20 years, guiding high-impact transformations with strategic vision and operational pragmatism. A lecturer at universities and business schools and speaker at international conferences, he is passionate about challenges and an ultramarathon runner: he loves to bring the same discipline he applies to running to business management.
Lean Thinking is a management philosophy born out of the Toyota Production System that aims to create customer value by eliminating waste in all business processes. It is still relevant because its core principles-value, flow, waste elimination and continuous improvement-apply to any industrial setting. Today, however, it must evolve to meet more complex challenges: market volatility, digitization, and sustainability.
Applying individual Lean tools-such as 5S, kanban, or kaizen-without an integrated framework produces point improvements that do not become consolidated over time. When improvement remains confined to small teams or uncoordinated initiatives, knowledge does not become a stable asset of the organization. What is needed is a more robust industrial governance system with clear responsibilities and measurable results.
Lean World Class® is the proprietary methodology developed by Bonfiglioli Consulting as a natural evolution of Lean Thinking and World Class Manufacturing. Unlike traditional Lean, it structures improvement into 13 thematic pillars - including Cost Deployment, People Development and Environmental Energy Sustainability - each with a maturation roadmap and measurable deliverables. The goal is to take the company from a reactive to a proactive state, turning improvement into a widespread organizational competency.
In the Lean & Digital World Class® model, digital technology is an enabler of improvement, not a starting point. The guiding principle is clear: first build solid processes, then digitize them consistently, and only then introduce advanced applications such as artificial intelligence. Digitizing fragile processes generates noise and slows down decisions; data quality is the prerequisite for any sustainable improvement.
In Lean Thinking, all waste is also environmental damage: overproducing, moving unnecessarily, wasting energy, or hoarding inventory carries both an economic and ecological cost. The Environmental Energy Sustainability (EES) pillar of the Lean World Class® consente measures energy-environmental waste through two universal metrics: euros and tons of CO₂. Lean and sustainability are not separate programs, but two sides of the same industrial approach.
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