A real landmark was passed in early September 2013 when the newly recruited SMART Myanmar sustainable consumption and production (SCP) trainees started working with three garment businesses in Yangon. The trainees were split into three teams and, accompanied by Richard Wright, the CEO of Sheffield Chamber who has a working history in manufacturing and business improvement, spent three days with each business. Altogether Richard spent two weeks with SMART Myanmar. Sheffield chamber is part of a consortium led by sequa in Germany of the project called "SMEs for Environmental Accountability, Responsibility and Transparency or SMART Myanmar, for short. Myanmar Garment Manufacturing Association (MGMA) is one of the local partners of SMART Myanmar. MGMA coordinated and selected the factories for this practical exercise.
Richard added "It is great to get the trainees into a manufacturing environment because that is where we can make the real improvements. We have used a technique called value stream mapping to understand how the businesses are currently performing and identify the areas where we can make real changes that will drive improved financial performance.
Value Stream mapping requires us to "walk" the manufacturing route through the factory and map it as a series of processes. Before we started the businesses would have described themsleves as three operations - cutting, sewing and finishing. The reality was that there were over 14 sequential processes and the interaction between them all is very complex.
The effect of rework, inventory and distance moved can cause massive disruption but value stream mapping allows us to understand that and we collect throughput times, process times, contact times etc and start to identify bottlenecks and wasted capacity. The way to improve any manufacturing operation is to remove waste but the key to doing that is to understand exqactly what is happening now.
Before my next visit in Novemeber the trainees will complete the current value stream maps so that we can then work within the factories to make improvements. There are a number of techniques available including defect reduction, 5S, OEE and six sigma but we will be able to identify the right ones using the value stream maps."
The realm objective is to drive better commercial performance in garment factories so the Myanmar businesses can start to build an internationally competitive garment manufacturing sector that is safe and efficient.
