Dawn Meats has been recognised with two awards at the prestigious Lean Business Ireland Awards 2018 in Croke Park, Dublin. The Lean Business Ireland Awards recognise and celebrate the lean and enterprise excellence achievements of companies in Ireland.

Dawn Meats was awarded the prize for “Most progress made towards Organisational Efficiency” as well as the Lean Business Ireland “Audience Choice Award” which was voted on by the audience itself on the night. Our focused on achievements at our plant in Carroll’s Cross, Co Waterford. 

Our Carroll’s Cross site is fully committed to implementing lean thinking throughout all of its activities. The site is a beef processing facility that employs approx. 275 people across three separate process areas and their associated administrative functions. After completion of an initial training phase, site management recognised the benefits of utilising Lean tools and identified 6S Workplace Organisation, P.I.T. process monitoring, standard work and A3 projects as key factors in achieving improved organisational efficiency.

Particular efforts were made to ensure that the initial lean approach which was driven by consultants and senior management was embraced and incorporated into the work of all employees at the site. All employees are now empowered, trained and motivated in Lean thinking practices. 

Niall Browne, CEO of Dawn Meats commented: “We knew that to successfully integrate Lean thinking into everyday business we needed to have every member of staff acting as a lean champion and not solely rely on the area managers to try to accomplish this. As a result, every member of the team can take ownership and be extremely proud of these two awards. To be awarded the Audience Choice award is particularly special and great recognition for the whole team by their peers in industry .” 

Lean thinking has transformed Dawn Meats site at Carrolls Cross, Waterford through sustained focus on four main areas: 

• Product – producing consistent quality products that exceed our customer expectations to enable us to us to be our new and existing customers’ key partner of choice building sustainable long-term relationships.
• Process- operational excellence through continuous adoption of innovative technology to enhance and deliver a world class manufacturing environment.
• People – challenging and supporting our people to realise their full potential as part of high-performance teams in a safe working environment.
• Philosophy – fostering a culture of continuous adoption of lean thinking and training to add value, enhance and deliver sustainability and transforming how we integrate as a business with our customers, employees, community and the environment.

The Lean Business Ireland Awards are open to large, medium or small organisations, working in any sector or a government department. The organisation aims to position Ireland as the recognised centre of lean & enterprise excellence globally and this award ceremony helps to showcase how companies are working towards enterprise excellence in Ireland, striving for competitiveness.

https://www.leanbusinessireland.ie/the-lean-business-ireland-awards-2018/