January 16, 2019

Measure up or pay up!

History is littered with examples of bad decisions, made on bad measurement data, and their very expensive consequences. In 1999, NASA lost the Mars Orbiter, which was designed to study the Martian climate & atmosphere. It…

September 30, 2018

Innovation Nation – How Ireland is rocking the Innovation vibe

The Star Trek transporter is my favourite invention of the future. What’s yours? Long renowned for our novelists and poets, Ireland ranks high in the nations of the world in terms of literary innovation. When…

September 4, 2018

Attracting (and keeping) the right customer – The software industry in Ireland

The major difference between a person with a lean mindset and one who has not, is that the lean head is always asking ‘Who is my customer?’, ‘What does my customer want?’ and ‘Do I…

August 28, 2018

Classroom vs. Online Learning – Which one is better?

As a child I well remember my father declining to tell us the meaning of words when we asked him. He would always say “Look it up in the dictionary”.  A true educator all his…

July 31, 2018

Lean Restaurant Management

The Gallery Cafe in Gort takes us a long way from high volume manufacturing! Sarah Harty, owner of this Co. Galway restaurant, exemplifies lean practice in many ways e.g. sourcing from local suppliers, good teamwork,…

July 19, 2018

Supply Chain Risk Management – Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

At regular intervals, a local crisis occurs in some country around the world, and the ramifications on global trade are felt for months afterwards. We can all probably name political coups, ash clouds, earthquakes, and…