PETER MORROW ALMOST missed the meeting that ended up revolutionising his business.

Back in 2016, Morrow – the CEO of Skylark Electric Attic Stairs, which makes motorised stairs for convenient loft access – was scheduled to attend a workshop on the Lean for Micro programme, organised by the Local Enterprise Office. But when the day came around, he was swamped with work.

He tried to cancel, but failed. “We headed off to Galway that morning literally giving out that we had to go to it,” he says.

“Then, maybe five mins into the presentation, the penny dropped. I went, Oh my god, this is exactly what I need.”

Stress-free stairs

The story of Skylark Stairs goes back a decade. “I’d been working in the industry for 18 years,” says Morrow. “In 2012 I went out on my own. We formed this company with the vision of taking the stair model people are familiar with – the folding attic stairs – and motorising it. Making it possible for people, especially those who might be getting on in years or have reduced mobility, to get up to the attic stress-free.”

Peter Morrow at the Skylark production facility Local Enterprise Office Local Enterprise Office

They built prototypes, perfected the product, and began selling at trade shows. Most early customers were based in the UK, and by 2016, Skylark, based in Tuam, Co Galway, was doing a steady business selling to British customers. Then Brexit happened.

“Things dried up,” says Morrow. “We started to panic a little bit. When you’re a small business, you can’t handle those periods” with no customers coming in. So they started looking at other markets. Seeking advice, Morrow went to a meeting at the Galway Local Enterprise Office. His contact there recommended the Lean for Micro programme.

“I had no idea what Lean was,” says Morrow. “I’d never heard the term before. But I was told there was a workshop day in a couple of weeks, I put my name down, and I didn’t think again about it.”

The Lean approach is a set of principles designed to help businesses work more efficiently. An independent review of Enterprise Ireland’s Lean Business programme found that many participating companies saw growth across the board with increases in sales, productivity and product and service quality. “It’s the most revolutionary way to run a business,” says Morrow.

Moving the machines

By the middle of that Lean for Micro presentation in Galway, says Morrow, “I knew this was exactly what I needed.” He organised a visit from a Lean advisor, who arrived at the Skylark facility just a week later. Her first move was to sketch out the production floor.

“She drew a little map of where our equipment was, and then asked me to go and make a part. And she timed me. It took 32 minutes. Then she said, we need to lay out this factory more efficiently, and she drew out a plan.” This was in the morning. “By 1pm we were moving the machines.”

The results, says Morrow, were almost instantaneous. “She came back a week later and we had that time down to 16 minutes. Since then, it’s halved again, it’s eight minutes.”

In the years since 2016, the company has grown and grown. We’ve probably increased our sales by 400%,” says Morrow. “We’re now selling in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the US, and Ireland. But our staff has only doubled. And we still have a little spare capacity. Without Lean, it literally would not be possible, we would be a mess.”

There are other benefits, too. “I personally have more time to myself. It’s a great quality of life change also.”

Knowing a good thing

So what’s the secret sauce? “It’s not rocket science,” says Morrow. But the key, he believes, is that it forces business owners – often consumed with the day-to-day running of operations – to take a step back. 

“As a small company, your whole time goes into developing the product,” he says. “Making sure it works, then finding people to buy it. But you never have a chance to think, how am I going to make this quicker, more efficiently? And we were very guilty of that. We were running around like headless chickens, it was kind of chaotic.”

The impact of Lean for Micro was transformative, he says. “As the owner of a business, you don’t step back and say, how can I do this in a more efficient way? Funnily enough that often doesn’t occur to us. But I look at our suppliers now, and I can tell which ones are using Lean. They’re usually the ones that deliver on time.”

Skylark Electric Attic Stairs Skylark Electric Attic Stairs

It’s a long way from almost missing that meeting in Galway. “One of the things I’m thankful for,” says Morrow, “is that we might not be the most intelligent people, but we were smart enough to know a good thing when we saw it.

“I wouldn’t go to court without a solicitor. Why would I try to run a company without the right advice either? And it’s right there, available from Local Enterprise.”