WTO data for 2024 indicates that Bangladesh posted export earnings of $38.48 billion, showing a slight increase of 0.21%. Conversely, Vietnam reported $33.94 billion in exports, supported by a substantial growth rate of 9.34%. Vietnam’s success is driven by higher productivity achieved through skill development, worker education, and lean manufacturing. To remain competitive, Bangladesh must adopt similar efficiency-focused practices. This study addresses the urgent need to enhance operational productivity in the Bangladeshi RMG sector by systematically applying lean manufacturing principles. This study investigates the application of Lean Manufacturing principles, particularly Value Stream Mapping (VSM), to identify and eliminate bottlenecks and non-value-added (NVA) activities in sewing production lines. To eliminate the identified waste, this study implemented a comprehensive lean strategy, including Root Cause Analysis for problem identification and the deployment of targeted tools such as Kaizen and 5S for workplace organization and material flow improvement. The application of these interventions and the future state VSM led to a measurable reduction in NVA time and a distinct improvement in overall production efficiency. Upon determining the different types of waste, various lean tools were used to eliminate the wastes.  Subsequently implementing these lean initiatives, a future state VSM was developed, showing a dramatic reduction in NVA time from 4.38 minutes to 0.33 minutes and an approximate 30% improvement in productivity. The results demonstrate that structured lean implementation can substantially enhance process efficiency, reduce waste, and improve the competitiveness of Bangladeshi garment industry.

Keywords

Lean Manufacturing, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), Bottleneck Identification.