Overcoming barriers to improving Occupational health and safety in Myanmar

Interventions in 15 factories

Myanma’s garment factories, like garment factories in many other countries face problems with productivity and work environment. To contribute to solving these problems, the project has conducted lean interventions aiming at improving occupational health and safety and productivity in the 15 supplier factories. The interventions lasted approximately six months in each factory and involved collaboration between SDU, a local consultancy company (earlier in the project an NGO and Yangon Technical university) and the local companies including employees at various levels.

In each factory the factory, the team from Myanmar and the Danish university team collaboration on co-designing interventions that would reduce the problem and at the same time generate new scientific knowledge about how productivity improvements could be used to reduce work environment problems.

More specifically, the interventions were started with digital training activities covering Lean (5S), participatory leadership, and occupational health and safety. This training aimed at ensuring that the participants from the factories were ready and qualified to engage in co-design processes. Inspired by a methodology known as photo voice, the participants were asked to engage in identification of problems in their factories and document them with photos. The photos provided inputs to the -co-design process where the various participants designed hand-on specific changes in the factories. An example was redesigning workstations to reduce physical challenges from repetitive monotonous work. The redesign resulted in both better working conditions and higher profitability – at virtually no costs.

 

“This change made me less stressed when searching for fabric pieces and thread cones and improved my productivity in meeting the hourly production target.” 

^{(An experienced female sewing operator with five years at MLS)}

Effects of interventions

The effects of the interventions have been assessed at the various factories for both qualitative and quantitative effects. The effects can be summarized in the following way: The interventions have led to significant improvements. Based on the evaluation of 11 factories, there was, on average, a 24.2% increase in production outputs, 0.2% a decrease in defects, and a 10.4% increase in efforts to narrow the gap between the production target and actual outputs. Furthermore, 32% of these factories have independently up scaled the integrated solutions to the rest of their production line partially or fully after six months of intervention. The companies were also satisfied with the collaboration. 73.3% of core implementation team members perceived a positive contribution to OHS conditions in their factories as a result of the project

(based on post-intervention surveys from 48 participants across 11 factories.)

“Some supervisors from other production lines asked me to do the same kind of intervention that the ESAM project did on their lines. They were inspired after seeing the model production line under ESAM project receive the outstanding efficiency award (higher production rate and less defects) among all production lines for three consecutive months.”

^{(HR Manager, MLS Garment Factory)}

 

In addition, the project carried out in-depth interviews with approximately 70 workers and factory representatives, and conducted a survey with nearly 500 participants focusing on leadership, Lean practices, occupational health and safety (OHS), and productivity. The project also applied an ethnographic research approach, on-site observations at each factory, to capture employee voice participation and interaction with their supervisors during the intervention process. To ensure that the findings were robust – or investigate what prevented the result from being sustained over time – the project team did follow up assessments at the factories after the formal interventions were completed. The follow up illustrated numerous context specific and generic challenges pertain to initiating sustainability-oriented changes and transformation among suppliers in Myanmar and the Global south in general.

 

“After three months of the joint intervention with the ESAM project, we observed nearly a 50% reduction in visits to the factory clinic among our sewing workers. Encouraged by these results, we expanded ergonomic adjustment practices and daily physical exercises across all departments of the factory and began replicating these practices in our other garment factory.”

^{(Director, Thiri Sandar Garment Factory)}

 

Scientific contributions

The project participants completed an implementation guidebook on lean and ergonomic activities in the Myanmar language for local industry stakeholders.

They also prepared six academic papers, three of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Additionally, the PhD project conducted under this project has been completed and successfully published as a dissertation. The defense of the thesis is the 29 of October 2025.

The scientific contributions relates especially to themes addressing knowledge sharing and co-creation among participants and to the extent possible between co-located companies – the last part was constrained my mobility restrictions related to the regime change in Myanmar.

More specifically, the deeper research based on the ethnographic intervention method documented challenges related to speaking up behavior. The research thereby contributed to introducing and expanding knowledge from Organizational behavior research into supply chain management. The research also expanded these areas by pioneering research on the effects of culture in this context. Finally, the research also expanded the field with introducing participatory leadership. Details can be found in the scientific papers published or included in the dissertation.

The papers are anchored in supply chain management and more precisely in the supplier development literature and are all multidisciplinary in nature. They include SCM, innovation, business, innovation, an anthropologist and an operations researcher. The results were not achievable without a multidisciplinary team.

Dissemination

The project disseminated the outcomes of intervention at selected garment factories and shared lessons on how to organize Lean interventions across various sites. Two dissemination events were successfully conducted, involving brands, supplier factories, workers, and development partners. Initially, the plan was to engage a wider range of stakeholders. Initially, we had aimed at conducting events with numerous types of stakeholders, but a change in regime prevented this. We have therefore had to focus on suppliers, factories and workers as the main participants. A typical dissemination activity consisted in inviting representatives from the factories to workshops, where the results were presented and debated with the aim of ensuring that the knowledge was used and also discussed with the aim of generating new insights.

 

PI  Prof. Jan Vang

Exploring the impact of university-driven supplier development interventions on supplier performance: a case of the garment industry
Paper from Seyed Pendar Toufighi, Jan Vang, Kannan Govindan, Amanda Bille, Min Zar Ni Lin. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management

Participative Leadership, Cultural Factors, and Speaking-up Behaviour: An Examination of Intra-Organisational Knowledge Sharing
Paper from Seyed Pendar Toufighi*, Iman Ghasemian Sahebi, Kannan Govindan, Min Zar Ni Lin, Jan Vang, Annalisa Brambini.  Journal of Innovation & Knowledge

Grand challenges and supplier development in the Global South: why experiment with new (ethnographic) intervention research methods
New paper from Jan Vang and Helene Balslev Clausen (Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark)

Employee Participation in Direct Supplier Development: Exploring Voice Barrier in a Global South Context. Includes three papers.
PhD dissertation, Min Zar Ni Lin

Designing impactful direct supplier development interventions: Critical-realist and ethnographic insights from the Global South
Lin, M. Z. N., Vang, J., Balslev, H., & Bille, A.

Direct Supplier Development and Frontline Worker Participation: Unravelling Behavioural and Communicative Barriers
Lin, M. Z. N., & Vang, J.

Barriers to frontline managers’ participation in direct supplier development: Insights from garment suppliers’ operations in the Global South. Presented at the EurOMA Sustainable Operations and Supply Chains Forum 2025
Lin, M. Z. N., & Vang, J.