Enterprise Ireland has launched a new Lean Business initiative to help Irish companies significantly improve their competitiveness in international markets and increase their export sales. Enterprise Ireland’s Lean Business Programme is a business transformation programme that applies lean business tools and techniques to Irish companies to help them address efficiency, productivity and costs to improve competitiveness in international markets. The programme has already been piloted in a number of companies and resulted in €15 million in savings. Commenting on the programme, Enterprise Ireland’s CEO Frank Ryan stated: “Competitiveness is based on many factors. Lean helps companies address and improve the internal factors over which they have control over and can affect. Lean is about learning the best way to do things for on-going competitiveness gains, sustainable continuous improvement and business transformation across the business and its supply chain.” Enterprise Ireland has already piloted the programme in a number of companies with significant tangible returns being reported by all of the companies in terms of their competitiveness. The programme applies beyond the traditional areas for lean such as manufacturing to service and software companies, to food and medical companies.
As part of the Lean initiative, Enterprise Ireland recently hosted a major conference for Irish companies in every sector on Lean Business. The conference, which took place in Dublin Castle, was addressed by world experts in lean including representatives from Diageo, Ducati, Lego and Toyota. A number of Irish companies that have already gone through the programme also addressed the conference including Lily O’Brien’s, Forward Emphasis, Richard Keenan & Company and Rosderra meats.