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Good practice Imported

Kaizen Managerial Training for Hanoi's Knitwear Cluster

Vietnam · Hanoi · See the Vietnam profile · See the Hanoi profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 63% 62/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

A 2010 RCT trained knitwear producers on Hanoi's outskirts in Kaizen methods; two years on, treated firms' real value added averaged ~PPP $186,000 vs $96,900 for controls (p=0.03), a gain that emerged only after year one.

PPP $186,000
Real value added, treated knitwear firms (2-year follow-up) (2012)
PPP $96,900
Real value added, control group (2-year follow-up) (2012)
p=0.03
Statistical significance of the gap
~160
Knitwear workshops in the cluster
Kaizen Managerial Training for Hanoi's Knitwear Cluster

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Foreign Trade University (Hanoi) & GRIPS (Japan) research team
Period
2010–2012
Keywords
manufacturing, textiles and knitwear, SME development, industrial clusters

Context

The knitwear-producing village cluster on Hanoi's outskirts (formerly Ha Tay province) is home to around 160 small, family-run knitwear and garment workshops with almost no access to formal management training.

Objectives

In 2010, researchers tested whether a Kaizen curriculum covering workflow efficiency, waste reduction and basic quality control could raise firms' real value added, via classroom training and/or on-site coaching.

Activities

Local firms were randomly assigned to classroom-only, on-site-coaching-only, both, or neither, alongside a parallel trial in a nearby rolled-steel cluster in Bac Ninh province.

Results

Management-practice adoption rose soon after training, but the effect on value added was initially small and statistically insignificant. By the two-year follow-up in 2012, treated knitwear firms' real value added averaged roughly PPP $186,000 against $96,900 for the control group (p=0.03); the parallel steel-cluster trial showed weaker results, since steel production offered less scope for the low-cost workflow changes that helped knitwear firms.

Conclusions

The gain emerged only with a lag, as firms took time to identify which new practices actually fit their operations. The design was later repeated with garment producers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, building a linked evidence base for Kaizen management-training policy across manufacturing clusters in low- and middle-income countries.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Research-trial delivery costs are not separately published in the cited sources; scale was limited to ~160 firms in one village cluster plus a parallel Bac Ninh steel-cluster trial.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Firms were randomised and trained in 2010; the significant value-added gap only emerged at the two-year follow-up in 2012.
Staffing & skills
Foreign Trade University (Hanoi) and GRIPS (Japan) research team, Classroom trainers, On-site coaches/consultants, Survey enumerators

Conditions for success

  • Combining classroom training with on-site coaching, mirroring the parallel Dar es Salaam finding
  • Tracking firms over multiple years, since the effect only emerged with a lag
  • Sector fit matters - the low-cost workflow-efficiency techniques suited knitwear better than steel production

Common failure modes

  • The effect was statistically insignificant at the first follow-up - a short-horizon evaluation would have found no impact
  • Benefits appear sector-dependent - the parallel Bac Ninh steel-cluster trial showed weaker results

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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