Case Study: Johnson Controls achieves over 70% of continuous-improvement savings by leveraging best practices with Upland Software's PowerSteering

Over 70% of continuous improvement project savings gained by leveraging projects from other plants

Johnson Controls, a global diversified technology and industrial leader with 130,000+ employees and more than 300 plants and locations worldwide, needed a scalable way to manage a company-wide Six Sigma/Continuous Improvement program after outgrowing a Lotus Notes–based tracking tool. The challenge was to support cross-divisional deployment across automotive, building and battery businesses and to capture, track and replicate proven best practices broadly and consistently.

In 2010 JCI implemented Upland’s PowerSteering to manage its CI portfolio, enabling workstream and “push” bulk-deployment methods, centralized best-practice review and searchable project reuse. PowerSteering now supports 600+ CI professionals, 1,000+ Green Belts and about 10,000 projects a year; internal benchmarking and best-practice deployment have delivered major results (one plant achieved over 70% of its savings—nearly $1M—from leveraged projects, a financial center saw nearly two-thirds of its CI savings from benchmarking), and sustainability practices were rolled out to 250+ sites, reducing energy use and GHG emissions.

Johnson Controls

Kevin Filcik

Continuous Improvement Controller