Garment sector is not only important for Bangladeshis but also for buyers from the US and Europe who outsource from different apparel factories of the country. Different companies see Bangladesh as one of the best sourcing destinations considering volume of garments, lead time, quality and price. All these together ensure them maximum profit to stay in business after meeting their operating expenses and social and legal requirements. Brands’ end-customers (people purchasing products from retail stores) are not only looking for quality and price of the products, they are concerned about the rights of people working in the entire supply chain. Thus social and environmental standards of Bangladesh’s readymade garment (RMG) factories are great concerns of developed countries. Maintaining social and environmental standards should be the tasks of both garment factories and brands. Common responsibilities and duties of brands/buyers and factories in order to improve social and environmental standards need to be performed jointly in such a way that would ensure benefits to both the sides. The aim of both buyers and factories is efficient business. Here efficient business refers to maximisation of profits after meeting all kinds of operating expenditures and expenses after meeting legal and ethical requirements. Business efficiency comes from core business functions which are those that directly contribute to maximisation of profits from production, merchandising, sales and marketing, purchase and procurement. For buyers, core business functions are sourcing products with efficient price, quality and quantity and in time. It is essential that initiatives to improve social and environmental standards need to complement and contribute directly to business efficiency of both buyers and factories. esults in terms of improved social and environmental standards may not last long. Without catering to business efficiency, the chances of improving social and environmental standards to buyers and factories are very low. For an example, if social standards such as remuneration, working hours, granting of maternity leave, implementation of building and fire safety measures, freedom of association and others are improved as a result of any joint initiative, then what are the possibilities of factories in making investment in such improvements?. Would buyers follow it up and be focused for a long time whether things are maintained in the way it is required by the buyers? But what would happen if joint initiatives for improving social standards are contributing to business efficiency in terms of improvement of production, merchandising, purchase and procurement of factories on one hand and buyers’ achievement of their sourcing goals like efficient price, quality, quantity and short lead time on the other. Improvement of social standards with contribution of both parties to business efficiency would make results last for a long time and it will make business sustainable. Particularly it would help Bangladesh’s garment industry double its business. From the practical point of view what should be strategies of any joint initiatives of improving social and environmental standards which also contribute to business efficiency is given below: Joint initiatives for development of factories need to be divided into three plans relating to workers, workplace and work method. These three development plans should be linked together through three common goals–social standards improvement, environmental standards improvement and doubling of factory capacity with increased world class quality. The objective of workers’ should be to enhance skills, attitudes and motivation of workers to raise capacity, social and environmental standards of factories. For this, one has to start with assessment of what the set of skills and efficiency (speed) of workers in terms of, for an example, sewing operation is and what will be necessary to double their skills and efficiency. It can be named as training needs assessment. It is obvious that once skills and efficiency are enhanced, they are going to be in demand from the competitors. So to retain them it is important to ensure their facilities such as wage and benefits, employment conditions, working hours, leaves and holidays, maternity benefits and others. These facilities should be at least as per the standards set by the labour law of 2006 and international code of conduct. Higher skills and efficiency need to be coupled with higher benefits. Knowledge and skills will not work if their attitude is not changed. To change their attitude they need to be trained on their rights – what they can get and claim, set by different laws and regulation. They also need to be proactive towards betterment of factories and society. All these can be done under one plan – workers’ development. After a certain period of time if this plan is implemented properly, workers’ capacity is going to be doubled with higher facilities and benefits due to their higher skills and speed. Implementation of such a plan will improve social and environmental standards with double factory capacity with world-class quality. It is very important to enhance workers’ skills and efficiency and review and implement facilities, benefits and awareness training. Motivation of workers, factory management and buyers are the keys to realise any improvements. With this view, factories and buyers are not only benefitted by improved social and environmental standards they are also gaining business efficiency. The objective of workplace development is to arrange workplaces in such a way that would enable and facilitate maximum production, safety and healthy environment. Development activities will start with checking out the existing workplace – production floor, store room and office for maximum production, safety and health. This plan will cover subjects like machine layout, facility layout, maximum utilisation of space, lighting system, building safety, and fire-fighting equipment, availability of machines, all kinds of exit and others. Workplace of any factory should be set up and arranged in such a way that would not only maximise production but also meet all the safety and healthy criterion required by the labour law 2006. Fixing the floor for maximum production, safety and security must be done together. Arranging the whole factory, store and office by applying engineering tools and techniques will increase the capacity of factories. Workplace development only for either production or safety will not ensure business efficiency. In this development process, it is very important to involve representatives from different departments of factories. This kind of holistic development approach for workplace will ensure not only improvement of social and environmental standards but also will support the core business function such as production, merchandising, sales and procurement. The aim of work method development is to develop standard process in such a way which would ensure maximum quality and productivity along with social and environmental standards. In garments factories, there are some core processes such as production process, quality checking process, shipment process, and sub-contracting and there are some auxiliary process HR processes, purchasing process, administrative process, industrial relationship process. To attain the objective of this plan – work method development, we have to give emphasis on how these processes can be simplified and then standardised. Simplification means keeping the only value added along with the essential activities and once they are done, it is required to standardise these. Once simplification and standardisation are done, it will be crucial to train up all sections of personnel from management and workers on those processes. For an example, production process in case of garment manufacturing involves cutting, sewing and finishing. Before development, this production process used to take six minutes to complete a formal shirt with involvement of 40 people. Once process is simplified and standardised, it would take 5 minutes with 30 people. So capacity, productivity and quality of the process will improve. Another implication of this improvement is that production will be done in time and eventually there will less stress. Total impact of improving this production process would be higher incentive of workers, less overtime, less absenteeism and turnover. Once all core processes are improved, there will be time and money to spend for development of environmental standards. It is very important to keep in mind that objective of the process improvement will fail if gain of such improvement is not utilised for sustainability of factories. It is now clear that these three plans are closely linked to each other. If workers are not developed, one cannot execute any work method development plan. If workplaces are not developed, it is not possible to use the results of any development of these workers and work method. At each step of execution of plans, motivation of workers, managers, owners and buyers/brands are very important. The writer is an industrial and production engineer, working for development of Bangladesh’s garment sector for last ten years.
