Sustained impacts of Kaizen training

• We assess the impacts of basic Kaizen training two years after the randomized trial.
• Positive and significant impacts on management skills were sustained for two years.
• Teaching concrete steps to eliminate wastes may be effective to increase business performance.
• The training increased willingness to pay for training participation.

We conducted a randomized controlled trial of short-term management training for small manufacturers in two study sites in Vietnam and collected follow-up data repeatedly for two years to assess longer-term impacts than the existing studies of management training. Our training programs introduced participants to Kaizen, a common-sense approach to production management. In both sites, many participants started to recognize the importance of learning about management and improved their management skills. The impacts on management skills were statistically significant two years after the programs. Our results suggest that the training program increased participants’ value added in one of the two study sites, likely because they learned how to eliminate wastes in production.