In Bangladesh, control is everything — which is exactly why the systems fail

Factories here buy ERP after ERP and watch them quietly die. It's almost never the software. It's that a system built only to control the floor is a system the floor will always resist.

Walk through enough factories here and you'll meet the same ghost: an ERP that cost a fortune, took two years to roll out, and now survives as a very expensive data-entry chore nobody keeps. The screens are open in the office. The real plan is on a whiteboard and in a WhatsApp group, thirty metres away.

Everyone blames the software — too complex, wrong modules, bad vendor. I don't think that's the real reason. I ran knit factories in Bangladesh for seven years, and I think the reason is human.

Control is the whole operating system here — and that's the trap

In a Bangladesh factory, control is everything. The entire structure runs on it: watch, count, check, push. It's how the place is held together, and there are real reasons for that.

But here's the thing about control: people resist it by instinct when they get nothing from it. That's not a Bangladeshi trait — it's human nature. Ask someone to feed a system, follow a process, update a number, and if the honest answer to "what's in it for me?" is nothing, they won't. Not openly — they'll just quietly work around it. The data goes stale, the reports turn to fiction, and the system dies of neglect while everyone points at the vendor.

So the very thing the factory runs on — control — is what kills the tool. An ERP deployed as one more layer of surveillance from above lands on a floor whose instinct is already to resist surveillance that gives them nothing back. It never had a chance.

The military, pyramid system looks orderly — and hides everything

Pure top-down control looks efficient: a clean pyramid, orders down, numbers up. But a pyramid is brittle. Bad news doesn't travel up it — nobody volunteers the problem that makes them look bad, so slips stay hidden until they're expensive. And it throws away the most valuable thing in the building: the knowledge of the people closest to the work, who can see trouble first and are never asked.

A factory run as a military system can hit a shipment. It cannot improve — because improvement needs the floor to tell the truth, and a pyramid punishes truth.

The carrot on the fishing rod

The fix isn't more control. It's giving the people who must feed the system something back — a carrot on the rod, not just the rod. Win-win, for owners and workers:

• Fairer, more realistic targets instead of impossible ones followed by blame.
• Less chaotic, last-minute overtime — because the plan warned everyone early.
• A fair line balance, so one operation isn't drowning while another waits.
• Recognition — and, where it fits, incentive — tied to hitting the plan.
• Less blame when something slips, because the slip was visible and shared, not hidden then punished.

When the floor gets something out of keeping the plan honest, they keep it honest. Then — and only then — the system holds, because the data is real. The tool isn't the point. The win-win is the point. The tool is just where the shared picture lives.

"Be second to none"

The automotive world has a creed: be second to none. Toyota didn't get there by watching workers harder. The famous andon cord lets any worker stop the entire line to fix a problem — the exact opposite of a pyramid. They made the floor a partner in quality and planning, gave people a stake, and became the most reliable manufacturers on earth.

Bangladesh is the second-largest apparel producer in the world. The skill and scale are here. I believe factories here can be second to none on reliability too — but not by buying a bigger control system. By making planning a win for everyone who touches it.

It's culture, not software

This is the same lesson as on-time delivery: the system that finally works isn't the one with the most features — it's the one the floor actually wants to use because it helps them too. Control gets compliance. A carrot gets commitment. Only one of those survives contact with a real factory.

Honestly, why I'm writing this

Full honesty: more than any deal, I'd love to come back to Bangladesh and help build something that genuinely works — for the owner and for the people on the floor. I spent some of the best and hardest years of my life there. This is a conversation I care about, not a pitch.

So tell me your real experience — especially if you disagree. Did an ERP work for you, or die on the floor? Would your people ever keep a plan updated if there were something in it for them too?

— A.K. · TB Textile Sourcing · Slovenia, EU
(European who ran knit factories in Bangladesh.)