Enterprise Ireland
Annual Report and Accounts 2006
Annual Report and Accounts 2006
High productivity and competitive levels are essential if indigenous Irish companies are to sustain export performance against robust global competition. To this end Enterprise Ireland made continued strong progress in 2006 towards our three-year strategic target of supporting productivity and competitiveness projects in at least 300 firms.
The added value of our support for productivity and management development is that it helps embed a culture of innovation and sustainable improvement in recipient companies, thereby establishing a base from which they can further develop products, services, competitiveness and, ultimately, export sales.
Productivity Improvement Fund
The Productivity Improvement Fund provides advisory support and financial assistance to help companies improve productivity and increase international competitiveness. Support is provided for machinery and automation equipment, technology acquisition and training.
We supported 150 productivity improvement projects during the year. These projects, covering all sectors, involve a total investment of €102 million supported by €28.6 million from Enterprise Ireland. Sixty three per cent of these clients were in the Industrial and Lifesciences sector, 30 per cent in Food and Retail Consumer Markets and 7 per cent in Software, Services and Emerging Sectors.
Supply chain management
The Supply Chain Management initiative addresses cost reductions, efficiencies in production, distribution and product delivery, and is also aimed at driving improvements in competitiveness. Under this initiative Enterprise Ireland supported over 60 client companies' supply chain-enhancing projects across all sectors of industry including Food, Engineering, Construction and Chemicals.
Benchmarking
Other productivity projects delivered during the year included an initiative challenging clients to establish how their business compared internationally. This work involved benchmarking over 40 client companies, and challenging and supporting 14 companies on medium term improvement projects.
eBusiness
Our eBusiness Unit continued to promote the use of ICT among client companies through the eBusiness Management Initiative. The programme supports projects across all sectors that improve productivity or increase international sales. This included 66 clients attending a workshop on using the internet to compete in international markets.
International conferences
Two major conferences organised to address innovation, competitiveness and world-class practice were held during the year. The country's first international innovation conference brought together a panel of leading experts to examine best thinking and practice in innovation strategy at national and company level.
Over 350 participants attended the two-day international Achieving Performance Excellence conference on building competitiveness and world-class practice. Organised jointly by Enterprise Ireland and the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, it brought together senior European, Japanese, United States and Irish managers representing 20 per cent of the world's top 50 manufacturers, including Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Sony, Pepsi, Dell, Volvo, Pirelli and IBM.
