On May 30th, MGMA and the SMART Myanmar Project jointly organized an “MGMA Factory Improvement Workshop” which brought together the SMART Myanmar SCP team, international garment experts and managers and staff from local garment factories.

U Myint Soe, Chairman of MGMA, started the day with a warm welcome and opening remarks. Following this was a presentation about SMART Myanmar by Daw Theeri Kay Thi, Project Manager (SCP Production) of SMART Myanmar. Next, participants divided into 2 groups and discussed about the benefits and challenges of the SMART Myanmar Project’s intervention in the garment sector. Afterwards, the groups presented their conclusions.

Mr. Christian Maag, Managing Director of ESGE, which is one of the largest lingerie manufacturers in Europe – with a capacity of 50,000 laundry items per day – gave two presentations during the workshop entitled: “How to Increase Efficiency and Productivity in Myanmar’s Garment Industry” and “General Requirements and Suggestions to Increase Textile Business to World Markets”. These presentations provided practical and useful lessons for Myanmar garment factories, in particular for factories which are trying to change from a CMP to FOB business model. ESGE has immense experience in manufacturing. As such, Mr. Maag’s presentations provided a wealth of examples on manufacturing “best practices” in the textile and garment industry.

Workshops such as this are precisely the sort of productive partnership SMART Myanmar and MGMA strive for. The day’s participants expressed that they were quite satisfied to gain exposure to these topics and to learn about particular points on which they need to change to stay competitive. In addition, several expressed that they were grateful to get some background on the state-of-the-art technology in garment manufacturing utilized by ESGE.