Significant Lean Funding from EI & IDA to Improve
Competitiveness
What Is Lean and How It Can Improve Competitiveness?
Lean can help improve competitiveness by maximizing value for the customer, whilst minimizing waste of all kinds
. Lean methodologies focus on
increasing productivity, quality, profit, capacity, and standardization while decreasing defects, lead time, cost, inventory, and waste
. Adopting Lean methodologies can help teams and organizations achieve their goals in smarter, more sustainable ways. A Lean organization
focuses its key processes on continuously improving customer value, through a zero-waste value creation process
. Shifting the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, departments, and assets to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value steams that flow horizontally across technologies, departments and assets is what Lean thinking aims to accomplish. Lean thinking allows companies to
adapt to changing customer needs and wants much quicker than traditional business thinking
.
Lean Funding
Many Government agencies including Enterprise Ireland and the IDA offer a range of supports to businesses, in their Lean Competitiveness Programme , tailored to suit different stages of development and specific funding needs. Their Lean Business Offers are designed to encourage clients to adopt Lean business principles in their organisation to increase performance and competitiveness. Expertivity Technologies have been providers of the Lean Competitiveness Programme for many years across multiple industry sectors. These programs are helping companies across the globe to address competitiveness issues within their businesses by building the capability of their people to identify problems and improve operations.
If you are an Enterprise Ireland or IDA Ireland client, you too may be entitled to funding. You can find more information below for both Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland funding offerings. Please see our EI/IDA Case Studies to get an understanding of the Lean Competitiveness Journey from our client’s perspective.
Where can Lean be applied?
Lean can be applied in every organisation of all sizes and in all sectors to dramatically improve its performance over the short, medium and long term. While Lean originated in the manufacturing sector, the Lean mindset and methodologies can be applied just as well to service and knowledge-work sectors too, including Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Engineering, Lifesciences, Clinical Trials and Information Technology including Software Development and Managed Services.
Lean is more than a toolset, its a mindset and way of thinking that can be applied in any organisation, regardless of size or sector. Expertivity are Master Practitioners in the suite of high performance disciplines that include Lean and would be delighted to introduce you to the benefits it can bring to your organisation.
Lean/Green Business Offer - IDA Ireland
One of the IDA business offers is the Lean GBS (Global Business Services) to client companies to enable site transformation. This offer is designed to encourage IDA clients to adopt lean and automation business principles. Leading to increased performance and competitiveness that will help sustain and grow their Irish services operations. We support IDA clients to achieve their global business services ambitions and to take advantage of modern thinking in service excellence. As a team of seasoned multinational senior executives, we understand how GBS companies can further develop international standards and world-class operations to identify and successfully compete for internal business on the global stage.
Lean Business Offer - Enterprise Ireland
We support Enterprise Ireland clients to achieve significant productivity improvement and cost reductions. Company-wide transformation in culture, agile business execution and sustainable results is what we deliver. Using Lean tools and techniques we can help you to map out and measure processes which can enable the automation of repetitive tasks, thereby freeing up more time for staff to work on value-adding activities.
There are three Lean project levels to choose from:
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Lean Start
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Lean Plus
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Lean Transform
Each level of support is characterised by increasing levels of capability in implementing Lean business principles and other best practice approaches to drive company awareness, adoption and integration of Lean tools and techniques.
Frequently Asked Questions
Lean can help any business by bringing transparency to the processes that deliver your products of services to your customers. Once you and your team can see the issues and challenges in the process, lean has some simple but really effective tools to minimize or eliminate those issues. The result is a process that is simpler, repeatable and therefore more effective in delivering the right product/service, at the right cost and at the right time.
Lean tools and techniques are helping companies across Ireland to address competitiveness issues within their businesses by building the capability of their people to identify problems, improve operations and create a more innovative organisation.
We have delivered many lean programs and it’s fair to say that they have always delivered a significant improvement for our clients. You can look at our case studies at your convenience to look at the type of results companies can achieve.
The length of time from application to approval varies, depending on the type of funding being sought i.e. there is a higher level of interaction and information exchange between EI and the IDA advisor and you, the client, for the higher funding, but it would be reasonable to expect the approval process to be completed in 3 – 8 weeks. Again the project completion time line depends on the size of lean program you are applying/approved for, the starter program is 7 days generally delivered over 2 – 3 months. The Lean Plus program is generally in the 6 -12 month time frame and the Lean Transform up to 3 years. You can read the detailed information on the funding offers on the EI/IDA websites but here’s a quick summary that you may find helpful.
The Lean Business Offer is made up of three levels of support:
1. Lean Start :
|
Eligible Cost Elements |
Eligible Costs |
Eligible Grant |
|
External Adviser/trainer |
€6,300 based on 7 days advisory services at rate of €900/day. Actual costs based on market rates may be higher |
€5,000 based on a grant of up to 80% of eligible costs |
2. LeanPlus
|
Eligible Cost Elements |
Eligible Costs |
Eligible Grant |
|
External Lean Training/Advisory costs provided by a Service Provider on the EI directory, capped at €900 per day. Internal salary cost of up to 3 company ‘Lean project champions’, up to 50% of the total project cost, subject to a combined max. of 250 days at €200 per day. |
Up to €100,000 in eligible expenditure. Actual company spend may be higher |
50% of eligible costs up to a maximum of €50,000 |
|
Eligible Cost Elements |
Eligible Costs |
Eligible Grant |
|
trainers' and trainees personnel costs, for the hours during which the trainers participate in the training; |
Eligible external trainer costs are capped at €900 per day including expenses. Internal staff time (trainer or trainee) is based on actual pay rates to a cap of €350 per day. |
The maximum grant rate is based on a percentage of eligible costs and depends on company size; Small – 70%, Medium – 60%, Large – 50% |
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trainers' and trainees' operating costs directly relating to the training project such as travel expenses, materials and supplies |
Travel and subsistence expenses are allowed as per standard EI policy where deemed reasonable. |
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costs of expert advisory services linked to the training project for advice and guidance on training programme implementation and appraisal as well as benchmarking / diagnostics where appropriate |
Costs of advisory services are capped at €900 per day including expenses, limited to a maximum of 10% of the total eligible training project spend up to a project maximum of €200,000. |
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Each level of support is characterized by increasing levels of capability in implementing Lean business principles and other best practice approaches to drive company awareness, adoption and integration of Lean tools and techniques.
In general, Enterprise Ireland support Irish SME’s involved in manufacturing or International Traded Services. The IDA provide funding support to companies (potential/current) who are considering foreign direct investment in Ireland. You can check if you have the potential to be an Enterprise Ireland or IDA Client by looking at the eligibility criteria on each of their websites, or contact us and we will help you to check it out.
Like anything else, applying for funding for the 1st time may seem daunting but it is quite straight forward. The eligibility and application steps are all highlighted in the Enterprise Ireland Website under Productivity and Business Process Improvement Supports and on the IDA site under ‘How We Help’ Funding Sources and Incentives. Expertivity have delivered many Lean Programs and are always happy to support our clients with the application process.