Few days back, I put on the radio and heard that one can acquire the services of a plumber, electrician through Employment Exchange and it got me thinking why not for a sewing operator? Skill management has always challenged industries and garment being a labour-intensive one, such challenges have always been feared yet faced.
What is skill management?
Skill management is the practice of understanding the skills required in any role and developing and deploying people to the roles matching their skill-set. Skill fitment is one of the key challenges faced by any organization.
To tackle skill management, any organization needs to clearly understand the skill level of its people. But this is highly challenging task considering our industry works predominantly with migratory and contract labour because of the seasonal nature of the business. Each day a production manager is faced with a task to identify the skill level of each operator and allocating operations accordingly.
The needs of our industry are very specific; performance is expected from shop floor employees (operators/helpers, etc.) and we have to determine the skill development programme through a matrix to monitor the level of individual skill profile and plan for continuous improvement.
Employment Exchange, which is actively marketing its services, registers the skill level of various artisans, then why not registration and deployment of sewing operators for the garment industry?
What is skill management?
Skill management is the practice of understanding the skills required in any role and developing and deploying people to the roles matching their skill-set. Skill fitment is one of the key challenges faced by any organization.
To tackle skill management, any organization needs to clearly understand the skill level of its people. But this is highly challenging task considering our industry works predominantly with migratory and contract labour because of the seasonal nature of the business. Each day a production manager is faced with a task to identify the skill level of each operator and allocating operations accordingly.
The needs of our industry are very specific; performance is expected from shop floor employees (operators/helpers, etc.) and we have to determine the skill development programme through a matrix to monitor the level of individual skill profile and plan for continuous improvement.
Employment Exchange, which is actively marketing its services, registers the skill level of various artisans, then why not registration and deployment of sewing operators for the garment industry?
I think we need to provide tailors a permanent job like everybody else gets. We expect every thing out of a person with out giving any assurance for future. This one of the reasons we are getting stuck today. How can we blame it on rising labor cost? When the prices of food and rents in cities is going up. How far productivity can be pushed.
ReplyDeleteAssembly was started to stream line things. If we do not need Bangladesh like labor problems in India? Shop floor is not the only area we should focus. We focus shop floor selectively, only when we need the work done.
What about merchandising.
How capable are they in booking orders. Orders are booked only on short term commercial interests.
Why can not we first ask buyers to give work permanently to a fix number of workers?
Why large number of tailors are leadoff end of season. Orders are booked wrongly and workers are put on overtimes. And then we expect PRODUTIVITY.
How many persons who sit in offices work 9 am to 2 pm for many weeks?
Why are we moving factories to cheaper locations? When productivity can be improved.
Is cheep labor really cheep or exploitation is easy in new locations for some time.
I think the solution is to forget growth for a movement and fix the problems first.
NEREGA has started this. We don’ts know who will end this.