success - EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation

Companies such as TancoAutowrap (a supplier of quality bale wrappers, front loaders and a
large range of front and rear implements) have moved from closure to being short-listed for
Ireland’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. Furthermore, Enterprise Ireland has been working
constantly to improve the main approaches the Irish Government takes towards SMEs.
In addition to Dr. Keegan’s success in business, he has personally profited immensely from the
“Challenge Towards World Class Manufacturing” programme: in 2001 he obtained a PhD from
the National University of Ireland in Galway. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Improving SME
operational performance using benchmarking and World-Class Networks”.
Dr. Keegan concludes that, “the major benefits of the WCM mission for us was that we would
have found it extremely difficult to identify key players and key companies to visit in Japan
or to organise such focused missions as the EU-Japan Centre has organised. It has been
incredibly helpful to get leading companies in Ireland to participate in this mission, because
they then translated what they had seen in the mission to many other Irish SMEs, as far as it
was possible in Ireland. This has helped us significantly to achieve and increase competitiveness
of Irish companies in the world market”.
Dr. Richard Keegan. Senior Specialist – Operations
Excellence Department, Benchmarking and World Class
Business for SMEs. Enterprise Ireland.
World Class Manufacturing 1995
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