Assessment of Productivity and Ergonomic Conditions at the Production Floor: An Investigation into the Bangladesh Readymade Garments Industry

The goal of this study is to investigate the change in productivity in the garments production floor initiated by lean and to assess the possible consequences for health and safety of workers. The study covers six garments factories where production lines with 250 sewing machine operators were included. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied. Three key lean tools (VSM, 5S, Time and Motion Study) have been applied and significant changes in productivity were found. Subsequently the actual changes initiated by lean have been assessed. The ergonomic assessment shows that the tangible lean changes tended to have either a neutral or a positive effect on OHS, whereas negative consequences were limited to attempts in pushing workers to work faster. The latter is not necessarily an inherent part of the lean methodology. The paper thus suggests that there may be possibilities for using lean to improve OHS and that the frequent critique of lean for intensifying work may not always be true. However, more research is necessary to study long term consequence for both productivity and OHS.