Lean in Practice

Real improvements. Real people. A working Irish business.

Lean works best when it is lived, not just talked about.

Every improvement on this page happened inside Advanced Technical Concepts (ATC), our manufacturing facility in Shannon. Some took minutes to implement. Some came from watching a short video. Some came from someone on the shop floor who noticed something that was not right and decided to fix it.

None of them required a big budget or a lengthy sign-off process. All of them are still working today.

This is what continuous improvement looks like when it becomes a habit.

Browse the improvements below. Take what is useful. Come back when you have something to add.

Improvements from the floor and the office

Office / Over-Processing

Thirty minutes back. Every fortnight.

Someone in the ATC office noticed that processing timesheets was taking the same amount of time every fortnight and producing the same frustration every time. Manual steps. Repetitive work. The kind of task that nobody questions because it has always been done that way. They questioned it. Using a macro on a Stream Deck, the process was automated. What used to take thirty to forty minutes now takes seconds. No rework. No errors. No time lost. This is what over-processing looks like when you catch it. One person. One idea. Compounding returns every fortnight from that day forward.

Watch the improvement

Production / Visual Management

Scan it. Move on.

Kanban cards had been working well at ATC. Visual signals for inventory. Clear triggers for reordering. Good system. But the data entry behind them was still manual. Someone typing information that was already printed on the card. The team integrated barcode scanning with the Kanban cards. Instead of typing, they scan. The data is captured instantly. Accurately. Without the lag. Human error in inventory ordering dropped. Time spent on data entry dropped. The people doing the work got time back for tasks that actually required their thinking. Small integration. Significant impact. This is what happens when you look at a working system and ask whether it could work better.

Watch the improvement Visual management tools

Production / Layout

If it moves it improves.

A simple observation changed how ATC thinks about shared spaces. Fixed things create fixed problems. When a layout needs to change, a fixed object becomes an obstacle. It requires effort, planning, and often two people to shift it.

Put it on wheels.

ATC applied this thinking across production areas, workstations, communal spaces, and maintenance zones. Layouts that used to take significant effort to reconfigure can now be adapted in minutes. Cleaning is faster. Changeovers are smoother. The risk of lifting injuries drops.

The principle is not complicated. Mobile equipment serves the people using it. Fixed equipment serves nobody when the process changes.

When we design trolleys, workstations, and modular builds at ATC, wheels are not an afterthought. They are part of the thinking from the start.

Watch the improvement

Browse standard builds and trolleys:

/products/trolley-the-helper-kit-assembly-part-assembled-blue-tube-pe

Design your own workstation:

/collections/workstation-visual-management-kit

PRODUCTION / CYCLE TIME

Two seconds per cut.

The team watched a short video on removing air from machine cycles. Time in a cycle where the machine is moving but not cutting. Built-in delays that had never been questioned. By adjusting clamp timing and ram settings on the prism saws, the team removed that wasted motion. Seconds saved per cut. Better throughput. Lower cost per part. No compromise on safety or quality. Two seconds per cut sounds small. Across a full production day it is not. This is how improvement really happens. Disciplined attention to waste. Measurement. Small changes that compound over time. And a team that keeps looking even when the process appears to be working fine.

Calculate your motion waste:

Safety / Point of Use

A fix from the shop floor.

Tubing extending beyond the rack was a hazard. The team had been using hi-viz vests to flag it. It worked. But it was not a proper solution. It was a workaround wearing high visibility clothing.

An ATC team member looked at it differently.

Using offcuts from other jobs on the shop floor, they designed a neat insert and flag system at point of use. No budget required. No external supplier. No waiting. Clean, professional, and permanent.

The vests went back on the hook. The hazard was solved. And the solution cost nothing because someone cared enough to think it through properly.

That is what pride in the work looks like.

KEEP IMPROVING

These improvements came from people paying attention to the work in front of them and deciding to make it better.

That is the habit we are trying to support at The Lean Company. Practical tools. Visible standards. Daily improvement.

If you have made an improvement using something you bought from us, we would love to hear about it.

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