The award is open to companies starting on their lean journey. Those that have made enough progress to see positive results to the bottom line.

The judges will be particularly impressed by those organisations that made an effort to engage the organisation as much as possible and can show real headway towards efficient and effective practice.

Entry should be made by written submission supported by visuals such as video or pictures to illustrate progress made, paying particular attention to the criteria below:

• Initiatives undertaken and no of staff involved
• No of champions in place
• Culture improvement initiatives
• Improvements in work practices including the lean practices used
• Annualised cost savings made
• Future focus – future projects identified

This award is open to Continuous Improvement Teams who have driven a programme of CI  across a number of business areas in their organisation.

The judges will want to know what you did, what were the outcomes and how you engaged others in the CI programme.  Additionally, describe how you worked together as a team and how that worked in practice.

You must explain what you have achieved so far and what you hope to achieve in the future. And you need to show evidence of the overall outcomes and impact of your work as a team.

Entry should be made by written submission supported by visuals such as video or pictures to illustrate progress made, paying particular attention to the criteria below:

• Identified improved working practices
• Team initiatives identified
• Team Engagement and commitment
• Outcomes achieved

This award is open to any organisation that has implemented a lean strategy designed to reduce inefficiencies, eliminate waste and create a culture of doing things to continuously improve the delivery to the customer.

The judges will want to know everything you do in order to achieve your objectives, clearly identifying the culture of a lean approach across all areas of the business.

You must explain what you have achieved so far and what you hope to achieve in the future. The judges will want to see evidence of an overall strategy that sets out your targets and how you plan to achieve them and hard statistics demonstrating year-on-year comparisons.

Entry should be made by written submission supported by visuals such as video or pictures to illustrate progress made, paying particular attention to the criteria below:

• Holistic/organisational approach taken
• Business growth resulting
• Improved competitiveness
• Cultural improvements

This award is open to all Educational Institutes that have contributed to the research and conclusion drawn about the impact of lean in Ireland.

The judges will be looking for the following types of papers: Empirical papers that report original research work with the objective of demonstrating enterprise excellence approaches in action. These can take the form of Lean, Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement initiatives, Cultural changes and Organisational alignment, etc. 

Conceptual and critical review papers that either seek to define a research issue and propose a theoretical exposition/explanation capable of empirical testing (e.g., theoretical papers), or draw upon or synthesize existing knowledge to define what is currently known about a topic or issue (e.g., literature review papers, methodological papers).

Entry should be made by paper submission, paying particular attention to the following:

• Research & theoretical/practical framing
• Research context, methodology and analysis
• Discussion & conclusion
• Organisational & social Impact

This award is open to companies that can demonstrate leadership in the application of lean practices across their organisation.

The judges will want to see overall leadership taken where areas of the business need to be challenged and efficiencies made. 

You must explain what you have achieved so far and what you hope to achieve in the future. We need to see evidence of an overall strategy that sets out your targets and how you plan to achieve them. Evidence should be presented with results and effort and how the overall team was  engaged to achieve the strategy.

Entry should be made by written submission supported by visuals such as video or pictures to illustrate progress made, paying particular attention to the criteria below:

• Shows energy and drive
• Is results orientated
• Can demonstrate Organisation culture change towards CI
• Shows Influence
• Can demonstrate real transformation in Business Performance & Culture Change

On the night of the Awards, there will be an opportunity for the audience to vote for their favourite winner of the evening. 

This will be a peer assessment and the criteria will be made available on the night. The audience will have an opportunity to vote on their preferred category winners  throughout the night and select an overall winner: Large Company, Medium Organisations and Small Organisations.

Criteria will simply be based on your experience and the presentation from the various category winners.