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Productivity Improvement and Skill Development |
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Objective
The potential to boost the RMG performance through a more efficient use of material and human resources is significant – the productivity levels of the sector are low compared to regional competitors and there is a large unmet demand for skilled workers.
To help the industry increase its productivity, PROGRESS works with a number of partners to
- Conduct productivity improvement demonstration projects, promote quality control measures and disseminate technical information, and
- Develop the capacity of factory teams, independent experts and leading industry associations to undertake productivity improvement measures.
To address the skills gap, PROGRESS undertakes various activities aiming at:
- Development and testing of training concepts and curricula for different categories of garment workers and mid-level managers;
- Improving the capacity of public and private training providers, and
- Identification of financing models for scaling-up of skill development initiatives.
Achievements
The impact of the productivity component can be summarized as follows:
- PROGRESS supported the leading industry associations to set up productivity improvement cells and to provide services to their members. So far some 50 member factories of BKMEA and BGMEA have implemented productivity improvement programs. In addition, some 60 master trainers and over 200 factory personnel have been trained;
- The program generated productivity information for benchmarking the industry and elaborated production standards for lean manufacturing, pattern making and machine maintenance, and
- Public private partnerships for productivity improvement projects with major foreign buyers.
In the field of skill development, PROGRESS has had the following achievements:
- Developed a training package and trained some 2000 disadvantaged people, who were employed with a starting salary about 200% higher than the average for new workers. A good measure of the pilot's success is that a private organization has committed to long-term support of this training scheme from 2010;
- Developed training concepts and curricula, which fully meet industry demand. All 60 graduates of the “Promotion of female operators to line supervisors” course have been promoted and more than doubled their income. The training “Enhancing skills of existing supervisors” has also led to productivity gains and increased workers’ income. To scale up these successful initiatives, PROGRESS is currently enhancing the capacity of private service providers to deliver these training modules on a commercial basis.
- PROGRESS’ work with major public and private stakeholders has encouraged better coordination and strategic planning for a national skill development strategy.
Published: March 2010
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