Transform Your Craft and Creative Business with Lean Thinking
In the last 2 years, 99 businesses from Cork & Kerry completed the Local Enterprise Transform Your Business with Lean Thinking Program, reporting savings of €3,435,366. That’s an average of €45,805 per company and a reported capacity increase of 36%.
What is the Transform Your Craft and Creative Business with Lean Thinking Program?
This program is designed to elevate your craft and creative business—making it Faster, Better, and Together as a team. Beyond just cash savings, it's about building a stable, secure, and sustainable business ready to face economic challenges. It’s about liberating yourself from Non-Value Adding activities by questioning and redesigning processes, allowing a focus on business growth and Value-Adding activities. The program has enabled businesses to reclaim personal time, work fewer weekends, all while getting more done. Through the Transform Your Craft and Creative Business with Lean Thinking Program, Jigsaw helps great businesses like yours BE BETTER!
Owners and managers of small businesses in the craft and creative sector are invited to join Phase 1 of the Transform Your Craft and Creative Business with Lean Thinking. This highly successful program is designed for any business seeking to improve profits, efficiency, customer service, and employee engagement by embracing LEAN Thinking principles, with a strong emphasis on teamwork to eliminate wasteful processes and ineffective procedures.
The hands-on, facilitated workshop will be led by Stuart Nelson & Eamon McKenna of Jigsaw Better Business, introducing a new way of thinking through discussions, breakouts, and group activities. Discover how the one-to-one guidance in Phase 2 can transform your business for the better!
Lean Wastes in the Craft and Creative Sector
In the craft and creative sector, Lean Thinking helps identify and eliminate common wastes that hinder productivity and profitability. These wastes include:
- Defects: Products that do not meet quality standards, resulting in rework or waste.
- Overproduction: Creating more products than needed, leading to excess inventory and storage costs.
- Waiting: Idle time caused by delays in the production process, waiting for materials, or approvals.
- Non-Utilized Skills: Underutilizing the talents and skills of employees by not involving them in problem-solving or decision-making processes.
- Transport: Unnecessary movement of materials or products between workstations or locations.
- Inventory: Excess raw materials, work-in-progress, or finished products that tie up capital and space.
- Motion: Unnecessary movements by employees, such as searching for tools or materials.
- Excess-processing: Performing more work or adding more features than what is necessary to meet customer requirements.
By addressing these wastes, craft and creative businesses can streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve overall efficiency.
Is this program for you?
Of the 2500 businesses that have taken part in the program nationally, these were the primary reasons:
- Increase competitiveness.
- Improve delivery times.
- Work faster.
- Improve productivity.
- Understand and reduce waste.
- Improve data & admin processes.
- Layout improvement.
- Process and efficiency improvement.
- Reduce congestion.
- Streamline processes.
What happens after Phase 1?
Companies in Phase 1 can compete for a coveted spot in Phase 2*. Here, a dedicated Lean Coach will work with them on a 1-to-1 basis for 5 x ½ days. During this phase, companies will apply Phase 1 learnings, delivering a cost-saving project or improvement, just like other successful participants.
*Note: Phase 2 is competitive, significantly subsidized, and a nominal charge will apply. In some cases, pre-approval for Phase 2 is possible before this workshop.
Feedback from Past Participants in the Lean Program
“We are being challenged in every visit, and growing each time.” “It’s hard work on our part but we are making great headway. Our Lean Coach is excellent at drawing out what way I need to look at how I work, and I’ve already started implementing everything and seeing progress.” “Very positive experience, the changes are being realised immediately.” “Each of the sessions have been of major benefit for myself and the company. We have worked on a process flow map for a major process within the business. This will allow the company to benefit for years to come as we can adopt this way of thinking into other functions and departments.” “We are incredibly happy with the work done. By implementing the new system and planning the data migration, we left the project with a tangible cloud-based platform that completely changed our way of working.” “Since we took part in the program, there is a greater sense of calm and control in the running of the business!” “I am impressed by the collaborative and nuanced way the trainers and coaches promote the Lean process to a small business so that it is a learning we buy into rather than a diktat that you as experts know best.”
Video Testimonials
Places are limited - “when they are gone, they are gone.” By embracing this Transform Your Craft and Creative Business with Lean Thinking Program, your business can unlock its full potential and achieve sustainable growth in today’s costly and competitive landscape.
