CI programs are usually built within the walls of a single organization. You benchmark against your own history and learn from your own mistakes. You rarely get to sit across from someone in a completely different industry and ask, "Are you dealing with this too?"

That's what made June 12th in Kilkenny, Ireland, different.

How Tirlán Built a CI Program Worth Sharing

Tirlán, one of Ireland's leading food and beverage cooperatives, hosted KaiNexus's first European workshop at their headquarters in Kilkenny City and invited customers from across the continent to attend. They provided the venue and opened up their own program for others to learn from.

Michael Phelan, Head of Operations and Supply Chain Excellence, presented how Tirlán built a governance model that tracks not just whether improvement work is happening, but if leaders are consistently showing up to the process. Tirlán calls their approach "everybody-everyday-improving," and they mean it literally: They’ve tracked over 90% engagement across project and KPI updates. That discipline gave them the confidence to expand from a single-site pilot to all ten Tirlán locations.

What Happens When CI Leaders Learn Across Industries

Eight organizations joined Tirlán in Kilkenny, spanning the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, medical devices, automotive, healthcare, and construction industries.

Each organization presented the specific business problems they were solving with KaiNexus, how they'd configured their systems to address them, and where they were still stuck. By the time the roundtable opened up, a pattern had emerged. Despite working in different sectors, they were all describing the same core challenges:

Daily management. Leadership engagement. Connecting frontline work to strategic goals. Building habits that hold across a dispersed organization. The problems were the same, and they could all learn from each other’s solutions.

Seán Kelly, Global Program Manager, Divisional Business Excellence, at Abbott Labs, described what that cross-industry perspective made possible:

"The workshop was extremely valuable in sharing practical examples of how organisations like Tírlán, The Hilti Group, Bon Secours Health System, Jack Henry, and Jaguar Land Rover are embedding continuous improvement at scale. It was particularly insightful to benchmark how Tírlán, The Hilti Group and Jack Henry are leveraging KaiNexus to support this journey. Learning from the different approaches across all groups provided fresh perspectives and tangible ideas we can adapt, especially around linking strategy to frontline execution and driving measurable impact."

Miquel Lucena, Global Lean Manager at Hilti Group, captured what stepping outside your own industry allows you to see:

"What stood out most was getting out of our own bubble and seeing how other companies are approaching continuous improvement. It really helped put our own journey into perspective and gave us a few new ideas to take forward."

Courtney Folkes, also from Hilti Group, noted what distinguished the day from a typical industry event:

"The biggest value for me came from hearing how other organizations are using KaiNexus to enable a continuous improvement culture, and the fact that we heard from customers at different stages of their lean journey. It was impactful to hear a variety of perspectives and discuss continuous improvement beyond just the tool/platform itself."

Peer-to-Peer Learning That Continues Today

Attendees left Kilkenny with each other's LinkedIn profiles and have been following up since. The conversations that started in Tirlán's Customer Experience Room have continued across industry lines, which is probably the clearest sign that something useful happened that day.

Michael Phelan, who hosted and presented, put it simply: "Knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied."

If you're building a continuous improvement program and want to see how organizations like Tirlán are making it work, we'd love to show you. See KaiNexus in action →

Summary: In June 2026, KaiNexus hosted its first European workshop at Tirlán's headquarters in Kilkenny, Ireland. Eight organizations from food and beverage, pharmaceutical, medical devices, automotive, healthcare, and construction gathered to share how peer learning accelerates continuous improvement across industries. All faced the same core CI challenges: daily management, leadership engagement, and linking frontline work to executive-level outcomes. Tirlán presented their 3M Operating System — a governance framework tracking KPIs, projects, and recognition — which achieved over 90% leadership engagement across ten locations.