Building a Better Equine Business with Lean Thinking: Increase Efficiency, Reduce Costs & Increase Profits

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We are delighted to collaborate with the Irish National Stud and National Equine Innovation Centre to support the competitiveness of our equine sector.

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Methods of improving business operation and competitiveness are often not prioritised in the equine sector.  Many equine businesses and offices struggle with processes and administration.

However, many equine businesses struggle because of high costs, accident risks, difficulty in attracting skilled personnel on a long-term basis and an over dependence on the owner. 

We hope to address this need to make operations cost effective and safer.

In collaboration with the National Stud, Kildare County Council’s Local Enterprise Office invites equestrian businesses across the county to this custom-designed programme: Building a Better Equine Business with Lean Thinking - Increase Efficiency, Reduce Costs & Increase Profits

Liveries, riding schools and instructors, trainers, freelance grooms, equine nutritionists, equine-tech entrepreneurs, and anyone working within the equine sector are invited to apply.

What to Expect:

½ day introduction to lean processes on 26^th September, 10am -1pm (ONLINE)

The basic principles of Lean and how to identify and reduce 8 categories of waste within your own equine business. The objectives are to improve productivity and get the most out of the skills that you already have within the business. Never has the need to improve labour productivity and staff retention been as great as it currently is.

We will demonstrate some practical examples of how companies have applied Lean Management Principles to improve productivity.

Full day in The Irish National Stud on 3^rd October 9:30am - 4:30pm (lunch provided)

Simulation and application of lean management principles specific to the equine sector. This is a fully collaborative day and will identify lean projects for each participant which they can begin to implement immediately.

Implementation will be supported by individual site visits and 1-1 consultant support to implement adoption of lean management principles to each equine facility/operation.

Outcome:

In delivering this pilot programme in collaboration with The National Stud, it is intended that business owners will be supported to streamline everyday processes so that operational costs can be reduced and working conditions improved.

A recent research paper published by Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences titled Introducing lean production process model for the horse business sector in Sweden suggested that:

Equine businesses working with lean production are suggested to benefit by having less time spent on non-horse activities, more on staff development, the staff staying longer in the occupation, having fewer accidents and fewer days off.

Having seen the success of the application of Lean management principles across multiple sectors, we are confident that the results each participant company will achieve will see greater customer value, business development opportunities, increased staff retention, better focus with more work-time-efficient routines and higher profit.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA:

The programme is open to Kildare-based equine businesses engaging in activities equine activities other than primary agriculture and employing up to 50.

The business will be training for a minimum of 6 months and have generated revenues in excess of €30,000.