KaiNexus recently hosted a webinar I was especially looking forward to: “Unlock the Power of Leadership: The Electrolux Manufacturing System (EMS) Way,” presented by Sandro Casagrande from Electrolux. The session took place on December 10 at 1 pm Eastern, and you can register here to view the slides and more:
To help set the stage, I recorded a short preview conversation with Sandro. You can watch it here… the recording of the webinar is also found below.
Webinar Recording:
Why This Topic Matters
Electrolux has one of the most durable, long-running Lean initiatives in global manufacturing. EMS began as a pilot effort in 2005, and the company recently marked its 20-year milestone. Longevity doesn't happen by accident, and Sandro shared a clear, honest look at what actually drives that staying power.
Across his 30-plus years at Electrolux–starting with Total Quality Management work in Italy, then roles in R&D, purchasing, facilities, and finally leading EMS deployment–Sandro has seen the system from every angle. The initial phase of EMS focused heavily on structure and training, and it worked… in some places. In others, despite the same investment, results didn't sustain.
That inconsistency led to an important insight: leadership behavior was the missing ingredient. Tools and training weren't enough to create engagement, build capability, or strengthen culture. Electrolux stepped back, reassessed, and ultimately reframed its approach into what they now call “EMS Way”–a deeper focus on leader habits, behaviors, and the daily interactions that make improvement possible.
What You'll Learn in the Webinar
In the full session, Sandro will expand on themes we only touched on in the preview:
- How EMS evolved from its early TQM roots into a global system.
- Why consistent leadership behavior matters more than consistent tool deployment.
- The disconnect the company found between effort and impact–and how they addressed it.
- Lessons from introducing EMS in different cultures, including Egypt.
- How EMS Way strengthens sustainability, engagement, and capability development.
- What 20 years of learning suggests for the next 20.
What I appreciated most in our conversation was the balance of humility and experience. After three decades, Sandro still frames his work as continuous learning–something that resonates strongly with our community.
Register for the Full Webinar
The webinar is free, and if you're a Lean leader, CI practitioner, or simply interested in how organizations scale improvement sustainably, this will be worth your time.
I'll be hosting, and I hope you can join us.
Transcript
Mark Graban: Hi, it's Mark Graban here, and today on the KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Podcast, we're doing a preview of our next webinar in our webinar series. It's titled “Unlock the Power of Leadership: The Electrolux Manufacturing System Way“. The webinar is going to be held December 10th at 1:00 PM Eastern. You can register by looking for a link in the show notes or the video description, or you can go to KaiNexus.com/webinars. The webinar is being presented by Sandro Casagrande, and he's joining us today for a bit of that preview. Sandro, hello. Buongiorno. How are you?
Sandro Casagrande: Hello. Hi, Mark. Nice to see you. Doing well, thank you. What about you?
Mark Graban: I am doing great. I'm excited that you're going to be sharing with us in the webinar. Thank you to everybody at Electrolux for being a customer of KaiNexus.
Sandro Casagrande: It is our pleasure and my special pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invite. I'm very happy to have this opportunity to share a little bit of our experience.
Mark Graban: Yeah, and there's a lot of experience. Congratulations on 20 years of the Electrolux Manufacturing System. I know we'll hear more about that in the webinar, but before we talk about the company, it's always great to get to know the presenter a little bit. Sandro, if you would tell us about yourself and your professional background.
Sandro Casagrande: Yeah. I am Italian, living in the northeast of Italy in the now becoming famous area of the Prosecco Hills. So that is a very nice zone, right? I got my university degree in Milan; I'm an aerospace engineer. Also in the same university some years ago, I was following a master's degree in innovation and company management while I was already working at Electrolux in the site close to Milan University.
So, I joined the company in 1994, so 31 years ago. Wow. And that is not so common–more than 30 years in the same company. This is a statement, right? The company offers a lot of opportunities. Curiously, I didn't know anything about Lean and continuous improvement in my university part, and I was hired in the company exactly to join a small team that was starting to introduce continuous improvement in the Italian site.
So my first job was in Total Quality Management, and that was my entry level. They gave me a lot of books to read, a lot of things, and luckily I had the chance to meet some consultancies, work together with them, and start to practice a little bit. So that was the initial exposure.
Then the company, for some reason–that was only an Italian project–had some reorganizations and a different perspective, different frontiers. So that project was not confirmed, and I took other experiences in the same company, visiting different sites. I was working in R&D, in purchasing, and in facilities, getting some additional responsibility and growing.
Then in 2005, the company decided to launch the Electrolux Manufacturing System. By chance, the pilot plant where they were experimenting with the process was exactly the one where I was working. Putting together my initial experience and something similar that was coming, my response was, “What do you think about joining this kind of activity here and try to seek?”.
So that was basically the beginning of the second round. I had the chance to start the initial pilot, and then step-by-step was trained as the first group of change agents in the company. I became the promoter of the system, first in the plant where I was working, and then coordinating at the Italian level, then at the European level. Then I also had the fantastic opportunity to start the process and manage the Lean transformation in Egypt, which was a completely different culture, and it was another great experience.
Nowadays, I'm working at the Group Level since a couple of years ago, coordinating the activity of the different business areas to continue to develop the program and also support the training and development needs of the different sites. So that is a little bit of background. At the beginning, it was additional responsibility; now growing with the different experiences, it is becoming the first part. So I would say starting the experience, first contacting Lean 30 years ago, and still learning a lot every day about these things and about the opportunity we have when we exchange information with other companies and other sites.
Mark Graban: Yeah. We're all learning or hopefully–there's so much to learn. We learn by doing new things. It sounds like as your responsibilities have grown and the Electrolux Manufacturing System has grown, that has provided great opportunities for you and for the company. In the webinar, as the title suggests, “Unlock the Power of Leadership,” maybe could you share a few thoughts as a preview about the role of leaders at Electrolux and the impact that has?
Sandro Casagrande: Yeah. So basically, we would like to share some parts of the experience, which is very relevant. Which is basically: we have an organization, we have training, we have a good structure. We have been doing a lot of effort in all the sites; the company is quite wide. That will show a little bit about how spread it is. But let's say, anyway, we were thinking we were on the right track and we were investing a lot in training people in a professional way.
But after nine, ten years–we have an internal process that is basically measuring the progress, we have some different levels of what we call site certification–and after 10 years, we were basically giving the same effort everywhere, but the results in terms of engagement, sustainability, and further development and robustness of the culture were not the same at all. So we were not achieving good results everywhere compared to the effort that we were sustaining.
And so then we were reflecting about what was the approach, what we were missing, and analyzing the situation. And that is something we learned in the process. We came back and said, “Okay, then we miss an element,” which is the importance of the behavior of the leaders to make continuous improvement sustainable. In some places it was working, in some other places less, and we didn't understand why.
From this reflection, we launched a new update about the content and the approach, and that is what we are calling the “EMS Way”. And this, I would like to share a little bit about the experience–how we were changing the strategy and changing the focus to have more possibility to get better results in general, both on the performance itself and benefits, and on the other side, the cultural change and the growth of our people.
Mark Graban: So we're going to learn a lot more about that during the webinar, and the benefits of, again, 20 years of progress under the Lean label. Like you said, Sandro, I have similar roots in the mid-nineties; TQM was still part of the conversation. And there are overlaps and things to learn from all of those different frameworks. So I'm excited to be learning more about leadership culture of improvement, helping everyone be a catalyst for change, and I'm really excited to hear more about that in the webinar.
Again, as a reminder, you can go and register for the webinar “Unlock the Power of Leadership: The Electrolux Manufacturing System Way,” or EMS as it's called. You can register at KaiNexus.com/webinars or look in the show notes for the link. Sandro, thanks in advance for doing the webinar, and thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself and the upcoming webinar here today.
Sandro Casagrande: Thanks to you, Mark. A real pleasure for me. Thanks.
If you’re working to build a culture where people feel safe to speak up, solve problems, and improve every day, I’d be glad to help. Let’s talk about how to strengthen Psychological Safety and Continuous Improvement in your organization.
