CBE’s Journey with Lean Product Development

CBE Is a leading point of sale supplier in Ireland and the UK with significant growth in Europe. Their journey with Lean Product Development (LPD) started with an IRDG workshop delivered by Ron Mascitelli. We were taken with the straight-forward nature of the tools and techniques and felt LPD would add real value to our software development processes. We deliver a huge range of projects and delivering them in an efficient way was a real priority for us.

We commenced an in-house LPD programme through IRDG, supported by Enterprise Ireland’s LeanStart initiative. Specifically focused on our Product Development function, the programme focused on areas such as selecting the right projects, failing fast, mitigating risks, visual workflows, value stream mapping and productivity.

Employees have really bought into the process and the business is benefitting. We’ve increased communications and knowledge sharing within our teams through our show-and-tells, and have seen a dramatic improvement in the quantity and efficiency of our rollouts and installations in the last 18 months.

A key thing we’ve learned is that while you can get by on your own processes, you can’t really upscale without implementing lean to bring business efficiencies.

We would strongly encourage others to explore the LPD approach. Training up Lean Champions is a powerful way to provide continued leadership and guidance in-house. If we were starting again, the only thing I would do differently is take the opportunity to visit other companies already established with LPD. It would have been useful to see it in operation so as to more quickly identify the tools and techniques that would work best in our business environment.