Lean World Class® represents today the new paradigm of industrial improvement. For years, Lean Thinking has been the benchmark, but in a scenario marked by volatility, competitive pressure, technological innovation and environmental transition, it is no longer enough to apply individual tools or launch isolated projects. A leap of maturity is needed: transforming Lean into a structured system capable of integrating performance, people, digital technology and sustainability. This is the heart of Michele Bonfiglioli’s new editorial project: 25 years of Lean Thinking in the Italian style, dedicated to the evolution towards Lean World Class®.
There are ideas that remain relevant because they know how to change form without betraying their strength. Lean Thinking is one of them. Over the last twenty-five years, it has radically transformed the way we conceive work, flows, waste, and value for the customer. It has taught companies to look at production processes with different eyes, to make inefficiencies visible, and to build methods where before habits, urgencies, or improvisation prevailed. But precisely because it is a living paradigm, today Lean is called upon to take a further step: to remain faithful to its founding principles while at the same time opening up to the great challenges of the present.
The point, therefore, is not to understand whether Lean still serves its purpose. It certainly does. The real issue is another: how to make it fit into a much more complex industrial context than the one in which it initially spread. Today’s companies must face unstable markets, pressure on their supply chains, increasing expectations regarding speed, quality, and customization, as well as an increasing focus on sustainability and the quality of data. In this scenario, Lean can no longer be considered a mere collection of tools. It must become a more robust, disciplined, and capable industrial governance system capable of generating lasting results.
Many companies claim to have embarked on a Lean journey. And often it is true, at least in part. They have introduced 5S practices, Kanban, TPM, kaizen workshops, and visual management. They have initiated improvement projects, perhaps even achieving concrete results. But this is where one of the most common shortcomings lies: the fragmented application of Lean. When improvement remains confined to isolated tools, limited teams, or initiatives that are not integrated, knowledge does not consolidate and does not become a stable asset of the organization.
Based on the experience gained over 25 years of national and international projects, traditional Lean has shown its limitations not because it lacked 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 entire system; other times lacking a real connection with economic impacts and the growth of internal skills. The result is well known: visible improvements but not consolidated; valid initiatives but not scalable; initial enthusiasm followed by a slowdown. For this reason, today it is no longer enough to “do Lean”. It is necessary to build Lean organizations. And building them means transforming improvement into a widespread competence, into a shared responsibility, into a managerial discipline capable of surviving projects and taking root in everyday operations.
It is precisely from this need that Lean World Class® was born, our proprietary methodology. Not a break with Lean Thinking, but its most mature development: a model that keeps the principles of the Toyota Production System alive — value, value-added activity, flow, flow-oriented perfection — and structures them in a more rigorous, organized, and measurable way.
The substantial difference lies in the system logic. In Lean World Class®, every area of improvement is overseen by thematic pillars, each entrusted to a clear responsibility, with a roadmap of maturation and measurable deliverables. Improvement is no longer entrusted to the good will of individuals or occasional initiatives, but becomes part of 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. Responsibility does not remain in the hands of specialists or a narrow group of facilitators, but involves the line staff directly, that is, those who experience the processes every day and can truly 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 most interesting contributions of the model is overcoming a dilemma that has always accompanied transformation processes: should change be driven from above or emerge from the bottom? The answer proposed by Lean World Class® is clear: both directions are indispensable. At the beginning, a strong leadership from management is needed, capable of defining the vision, priorities, objectives, and resources. But for change to endure, it must be absorbed by routines, behaviors, operational decisions, and shared responsibility.
This is where the model gains depth. Top Management ensures direction and strategic consistency. The operational teams ensure root-work, continuity, and learning. In the middle, the system of pillars and governance creates the infrastructure that holds together vision and action. This balance makes the Lean World Class® particularly relevant for all those companies that do not want to limit themselves to "doing a few improvement projects“, but aim to build a stable and replicable competitive advantage.
Lean World Class® is based on a pillar structure that covers the business functions transversally. The Pillars are 13:
Each pillar presides over a critical area of the performance and helps to generate synergies with the others to move from a reactive to a proactive state.
In the Pillars, Cost Deployment plays a central role, because it introduces a discipline often absent in improvement processes: the translation of losses into economic value. It is not enough to know where waste is located. It is necessary to quantify it, prioritize it, define the priorities and finance the interventions in a coherent manner. This is the step that makes improvement fully readable even from a managerial and financial perspective.
Similarly, Focused Improvement systematizes kaizen, Autono Mous Maintenance returns plants to stable base conditions, Professional Maintenance introduces advanced reliability logics, while People Development confirms that the true engine of transformation remains the growth of skills. The message is simple but powerful: lasting excellence cannot be built without prepared, empowered, and involved people.
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 dedicated to the foundations: initial audit, defining the plan, activating the more standard-oriented pillars, security, and basic conditions. The second year delves into the heart of the system: extending to the more analytical pillars, introducing digital flows, and first tangible results in the financial statement. The third year is the one of cultural maturity: automating information flows, periodic audits, teams capable of acting autonomously, predictive approaches, and the consolidation of improvement as an organizational competency.
This time scan is much more than a simple operational sequence. It is a cultural stance. It tells companies that excellence does not come from a one-shot intervention, but from a progressive, disciplined, and intentional path. In a time when many organizations seek shortcuts, this vision brings depth to the concept of transformation.
In its most advanced evolution, Lean World Class® opens up to Lean & Digital World Class®, where the digital dimension is treated as an enabler of improvement. Data collection, its storage, analysis and visualization become an integral part of the system, through a logic that, from the field, leads to decision-making.
But the most important principle is another: without data quality, there can be 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 undermine the credibility of the system. That is why defining a sequence is very important: first build solid processes, then digitize them consistently, and only after that implement the most advanced applications, including artificial intelligence.
This reading is particularly valuable today. In many companies, the risk is not a lack of technology, but an overabundance of technology poorly integrated into fragile processes. The Lean World Class® overturns this approach: it puts order before accelerating, creates foundations before scaling, builds reliability before automating.
An additional evolution of Lean applications concerns sustainability. The argument is clear: every waste is also an environmental damage. Producing too much, moving things around unnecessarily, wasting energy, accumulating unnecessary stocks, generating rework or waste is not only inefficient from an economic point of view; it is also environmentally unsustainable.
From this comes a strategic message: Lean and sustainability are not two separate programs to be kept apart, but two facets of the same industrial approach. Improving efficiency also means reducing consumption of resources, pollution, and emissions. And it is precisely in this convergence that Lean Thinking reclaims extraordinary relevance: not only doing more with less, but also avoiding doing what is not necessary.
The book 25 Years of Lean Thinking in the Italian style draws on specific tools in this area, such as the SPPM method – Sustainable Product & Process Management – and the EES pillar – Environmental Energy Sustainability, which allows us to measure energy and environmental waste using two universal metrics: euros and tons of CO2. This is a crucial 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 simple improvement toolbox, but as the evolutionary foundation of a new competitive paradigm, where methodological rigor, economic measurability, growth of skills, 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 company stronger, more readable, more accountable, and more ready to face change. And today, in a global scenario that rewards those who know how to combine productivity, resilience, and vision, this is not just a detail; it is a condition of competitiveness.
The book 25 Years of Lean Thinking in the Italian Way takes the reader through a crucial step: from the application of traditional Lean to the evolution towards the Lean World Class® model, and finally to the integration of continuous improvement, digitalization, and sustainability.
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The author of the book is Michele Bonfiglioli, entrepreneur and CEO of Bonfiglioli Consulting, who for over twenty years has been assisting entrepreneurs and managers in Italy and around the world, leading high-impact transformations with strategic vision and operational pragmatism. A lecturer at universities and business schools and a speaker at international conferences, he is passionate about challenges and ultramarathons: he loves to bring the same discipline to business management that he applies to running.
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Isolated tools produce punctual improvements that do not become consolidated. When 5S, kanban, TPM or kaizen workshops remain confined to small teams or initiatives that are not integrated, knowledge does not become the organization’s heritage. The result is visible but non-scalable improvements, followed by slowdowns. A structured system is needed, with shared responsibilities, linked to economic impacts and the growth of internal skills.
Lean World Class® is the proprietary methodology of Bonfiglioli Consulting, a mature development of Lean Thinking and not a break with it. It maintains the principles of the Toyota Production System (value, flow, lean flow, perfection) and organizes them into thematic pillars, each with clear responsibilities, a maturity roadmap, and measurable deliverables. This thus shifts from a project culture to a method culture.
The pillars cover the company’s business functions in a transversal way: among them are Safety, Cost Deployment, Focused Improvement, Autonomous Maintenance, Professional Maintenance, Quality Control, Supply Chain, People Development and Environmental Energy Sustainability. Cost Deployment is central because it translates losses into economic value: waste is quantified, prioritized and interventions are financed in a coherent manner.
The suggested roadmap has a three-year duration. The first year lays the foundations: initial audit, plan and pillars related to standards, security, and basic conditions. The second extends the system to the more analytical pillars, introduces digital flows, and brings the first results to the financial statement. The third consolidates cultural maturity with automated information flows, periodic audits, autonomous teams, and predictive approaches.
A sequence must be followed: first build solid processes, then digitize them in a consistent manner and only after that introduce advanced applications such as artificial intelligence. In the Lean & Digital World Class® digital is an enabler of improvement. Without data quality there is no sustainable improvement: fragmented or inaccurate data generate noise, slow down decisions and undermine the credibility of the system.
In Lean, every waste is also an environmental damage: producing too much, moving it unnecessarily, wasting energy, accumulating stocks or generating waste consumes resources and emissions. The Environmental Energy Sustainability (EES) pillar measures energy and environmental waste using two universal metrics: euros and tons of CO2. The book also draws on the SPPM method, Sustainable Product & Process Management.
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