How Ardagh Cut 5S Audit Time by 4x Across 56 Factories
July 13, 2026
Ardagh Group has run a Lean Six Sigma program for 21 years. Part of that program is a monthly 5S audit at every factory, a structured check of workplace organization, cleanliness, and standardization on the shop floor. For most of those 21 years, the audits ran on Excel. That worked, until you did the math on what it actually cost.
The problem with paper and Excel audits
At least 10 people per factory spent 2 to 3 hours each working through the audits every month. Because the process was built on spreadsheets, it was never standardized across factories or regions, let alone worldwide. Employees walked the floor with a printout of the Excel sheet, took photos on their own phones, scribbled notes, then went back to a desk to type up a report from memory.
Run the numbers across the network: 10 people x 56 factories x 2.5 hours x 12 months comes out to 16,800 hours a year spent on audit administration alone.
The inconsistency created a split. Factories that followed the process closely lost enormous amounts of time doing it right. Factories that didn't follow it slipped further behind. Many audits were skipped entirely or documented so poorly they were close to useless. What Ardagh wanted was simple: less time on paperwork, more time on the shop floor actually fixing what the audits found.
Finding a 5S audit tool that fit the way Ardagh worked
Pierre Autret, LSS director at Ardagh, first saw Capptions during a visit to the factory in Dongen two or three years ago. His colleague Ron Prijn, the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt at Ardagh Glass in Dongen, showed him how the team there was already running audits on a tablet.
Pierre and Ron completed one audit together on the app, and that was enough. Pierre saw how fast it went and how little friction there was, and decided to roll it out across every factory. Ron helped build the internal case and sell it to the immediate team so it could scale beyond Dongen.
Ardagh's vision is that everyone becomes a process improver, every day, not just management. Most of Ardagh's management is fully onboarded to Lean Six Sigma: trained, educated, certified. Pierre saw Capptions as the first tool that could pull frontline workers into that same culture of continuous improvement, since anyone on the floor could log an observation, not just a supervisor with a clipboard.
"I like that you are still such a young company and that you listen so well to your customers. I see you have the potential to adapt to the exact need we have. Instead of a very rigid product to which we have to adapt." - Pierre Autret
The results: 4x less admin time, 10x faster master audits
In Dongen, the factory where the app was first piloted, a report from the most recent three months showed more than 600 audits completed. That is the culture shift Pierre had described actually happening on the floor.
In the US, Ardagh went further and consolidated everything that used to run through separate Excel trackers, EHS checks, Lean Six Sigma audits, waste checks, into what the team now calls master audits, all run through Capptions. At that factory, audits are completed 10 times faster than before.
"[Capptions] is such a success for me. The fact that every country is starting now is great." - Pierre Autret
Pierre never pushed the rollout top down. Instead, factories started requesting licenses on their own once word got around, a pull rather than a mandate. He expects it to be used globally within the network before long.
What actually improved
Administrative time dropped to a quarter of what it used to be. Pierre visits a factory every two weeks and uses the app on every visit. What used to take him four times as long now generates a report automatically. He can walk the floor with his phone, talk to the site manager, and attach photos as he goes, and by the time he is done the report is already finished and shareable, instead of sitting in a queue of tasks he might not get to.
The second big shift is engagement. People feel like part of the process because filling out a form on a phone is simply more natural than filling one out on paper.
"If you're still working with paper, I suggest you start with Capptions tomorrow. You can divide your administrative time by four and you will involve your people more. It's a lot more fun to fill out a form via an app than on a piece of paper. I would recommend the app to any potential new user."
Ardagh never formally calculated ROI, but Pierre says that compared with other software the company uses, the value is already clear, and the hours saved get redirected to work that actually benefits the business. When a factory asks for licenses, he gives them without hesitation, because he has seen the tool still in daily use months after rollout, which is not something he can say about every system Ardagh has tried.
Why this matters beyond 5S
Ardagh's story is about a Lean Six Sigma audit program, not a Seveso site inspection regime. But the underlying problem, structured audits that live on paper or in disconnected spreadsheets, is the same one that trips up EHS and safety teams at major-hazard sites: no standardization across locations, no real-time visibility for management, and hours of admin time spent retyping what was already written down once on the floor. For companies with formal audit obligations, whether that is a 5S program or a permit-driven safety inspection schedule, the fix looks the same: get the audit onto a mobile device, generate the report automatically, and give management a live view instead of a monthly pile of paperwork.