Natalia Vieira presses sections of a suit at the Joseph Abboud garment manufacturing plant in New Bedford, Mass., where teamwork is replacing old-fashioned, slower piecework. Management decided that the way Toyota builds cars was worth emulating.

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NEW BEDFORD, MASS. — The two might seem as unlikely together as a hand-stitched double-breasted suit jacket with a pair of work pants: Anthony Sapienza, the son of a factory manager, and Warren Pepicelli, who grew up on the union side, pounding the pavement as a business agent in Boston, walking from one of the city's 60 women's garment factories to another.

But Sapienza, president of the Joseph Abboud suit factory, and Pepicelli, who runs its union, are working hand in glove. Union and management are collaborating to revamp timeworn garment-making methods in favor of manufacturing techniques pioneered at Toyota Motor Corp. Their goal: Survival in the face of cheaper foreign competitors.

The U.S. garment manufacturing industry has bled jobs for decades as work moved to cheaper labor, first to Mexico and then to Asia. As Chinese manufacturing becomes increasingly skilled and sophisticated, the few U.S. factories that remain are vulnerable, and their managers know it.

Sapienza and Pepicelli both have about 30 years in the business. Sapienza, who spent his boyhood Saturdays sweeping cuttings in his family's menswear factory, remembers when there were 40,000 U.S. workers making men's clothing. Now there are 4,000, he said.

Boston lost 67 percent of its manufacturing jobs during the 40 years ending in 2000, according to the Brookings Institution.

The push for change comes from Marty Staff, president and chief executive officer of JA Apparel Corp. Staff and private equity company J.W. Childs bought the company in 2004; the brand's founder, Joseph Abboud, left in 2005.

Keeping Abboud's suit manufacturing in the United States has advantages, such as reduced shipping time, Staff said. He also believes overseas workers can't beat the quality and price of the suits Abboud produces in New Bedford, which sell in Nordstrom Inc. and Bloomingdale's for $700 to $1,000.

Abboud says its sales are about $400 million a year. While the company is doing fine, management says the U.S. factory has to improve constantly to justify the higher salaries its workers make compared with foreign competitors. The average wage in the factory is $12 an hour, plus union benefits. That's three or four times what workers in Mexico make, Sapienza said.

But if the workers in New Bedford could make suits faster, the advantages would be even greater. Then the company could restock a successful style at stores in season. It could get fresh winter suits to shoppers in late January, for instance, if a store had run out of a size or a color.

Finally, the company could make made-to-measure suits more quickly. The suits currently take 10 working days to manufacture; the goal is to make them in three.

To speed production and cement the factory's edge over foreign workers, Staff, who spent about two years as acting CEO of Penthouse Brand Management, read up on Toyota, poring over the book "The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production." He asked Sapienza, his team and the union to embrace Toyota principles, including "kaizen," a Japanese word meaning continuous improvement.

The union agreed. Pepicelli said, "It's an answer, but not a total answer."

The real problem, he said, "is an unlevel playing field; the competition from overseas makes it very difficult to be efficient and competitive."

The company is asking workers at the factory — half speak only Portuguese or Spanish and many never finished high school — to abandon the "piecework" method of making suits, in which every worker does only one task, and move to team-based work.

It's also asking workers to speak up at kaizen meetings, voicing their opinions on how they can do their jobs better. It's a big change at the factory, whose previous owners were strictly hierarchical.

"I can remember people coming to me and asking for permission to speak," said Sapienza.

So far, there are only three teams, each with eight to 10 workers, at the 600-person factory. The company hopes to move one-third of its jacket production to teams by August and all trouser production to teams by September. That switch would be enough to keep up with seasonal reorders and custom suits, Sapienza said.

For now, most of the factory's work is still done on the piecework system, which hasn't changed since the 19th century. Individuals are paid by the number of pieces they complete, with a guarantee they'll make the minimum wage, plus 25 cents an hour. "Make more, get paid more," Sapienza said. Most do — hence the average wage of $12 an hour.

Piecework slows production. During the four weeks it takes to make a standard suit, only about 250 minutes of labor is put into the suit. Much of the rest of the time, its components are being tied in bundles, sitting on a cart, waiting for the next worker to untie them and work on them.

In the factory's new teams, it takes 12 days to make a suit. Workers sit close together, and once a worker finishes a piece, it moves to the next worker.

The average wage on the teams is still $12 an hour, plus benefits, and there are shared bonuses if the team beats its quota or makes its quota faster.

Gabriela Rodriguez, 50, of New Bedford, has been working in garment factories for 28 years, 10 of them at Joseph Abboud, and is on the first team the company started. She likes it, she said. "I'm not under the pressure of piecework."