About LFS

Nick is an operations expert and leader with a passion for continuous improvement. He has developed a systems approach that integrates process design, organization design, and improvement design. He believes world class leaders possess the following:

• A vision of how to develop and connect business strategy to process design.
• An open heart to connect with people through honest, direct communications.
• The grit to drive a disciplined, metrics-based improvement culture.

He has deep experience developing leaders and is a master operations architect.  He led lean improvement initiatives as World Wide Director, Amazon Customer Excellence System, Global Continuous Improvement Director at Novelis, and European Region Account Manager at Alcoa. In these roles he had responsibility for integrating and advancing the lean programs.

Over the course of his 10 year tenure at Alcoa, Nicholas led breakthrough process improvements across a myriad of businesses and regions. He became recognized as a top lean leader and made major contributions to the development of world-class lean training programs. Demonstrating his hands-on approach, he then took over operations leadership for a failing aerospace castings plant and played a major role in turning the business around.

Nicholas started his operations career with Ingersoll-Rand in their Manufacturing Management Development Program. He played a key role in building the first lean model plant for the company. This plant was held up as the standard for driving breakthrough business performance. His contributions were recognized by the company through sponsorship for an Executive MBA and promotion into engineering and production leadership roles.

Nicholas holds an MBA from Duke University, a Masters of Engineering in Operations Research from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.