Noel HennesseyPractical Lean Solutions

Noel Hennessey, DBA, MSc Lean Operations

Recognised Expertise in Lean Manufacturing and Employee Engagement.

Noel is the founder and Managing Director of Practical Lean Solutions and has over 25 years’ experience of implementing Continuous Improvement programmes. Noel, in his role as Enterprise Excellence Director at his former employer Lake Region Medical (now Integer) led the site at New Ross, County Wexford to achieve in 2012 the distinction of becoming the first company in any sector in Ireland, and the first medical device company in Europe, to achieve the prestigious Shingo Accreditation. Also in 2012, it was crowned Irish Medical Technology Company of the Year in recognition of its Enterprise Excellence Program.

A committed life-long-learner, Noel’s search for best practices has seen him participate in global benchmarking visits across Europe, Japan, USA, and India; he has an MSc in Lean Operations from Cardiff University; and attained his Doctorate in Business Administration from WIT (now South East Technological University) which focused on the link between involvement in continuous improvement & employee engagement. In 2021, Noel published the Human Lean book with his co-author John Bicheno, which has won both Shingo and Lean Business Ireland Publication Awards.

In October 2023 Noel was inducted into the Shingo Academy Hall of Fame for his contribution to organisational excellence across Ireland and further afield.   

The Benefits of Continuous Improvement

The fundamental reason that companies implement continuous improvement is to improve their performance, create a competitive advantage, and increase profitability

Continuous Improvement

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The fundamental reason that companies implement continuous improvement is to improve their performance, create a competitive advantage, and increase profitability.

Organisational Improvement

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The ability of CI programs to deliver a more effective operating system through lowering costs, and improving performance and quality is a well-established fact.

Employee Benefits

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In the modern workplace enlightened leaders understand that when it comes to implementing sustainable improvement the real “experts” are the people who are doing the work day in day out.

Tactical Development of Lean Manufacturing & Employee Engagement Strategies


Contact us today for a no obligation chat on how we can help you and your business needs

Our Consulting Services

At Practical Lean Solutions, experience has taught us the reason that nine out of ten continuous improvement initiatives fail, or the benefits are not sustained, is due to human rather than technical issues. Put simply, the best ideas in the world are worthless if employees fail to embrace them. The fact that most organisations view continuous improvement implementation as a technical function serves only to compound the problem.

How We Can Help

The ability of Continuous Improvement programs to deliver a more effective operating system through lowering costs, and improving performance and quality is a well-established fact.  In their review of CI, Zangwill and Kantor (1998) reference a number of improvement results which bear testimony to the power of CI. These include examples of increases in productivity of up to 100% without any major capital investment, and reductions in manufacturing cycle time by a factor of 20.