Skill development in Textile Industry

 18 January 2023, Mumbai

A global quota-free trade environment presents the local clothing and textiles industry with several significant challenges, including globalization, emerging technologies, constant firm-level re-engineering, regulatory and workforce pressures, managing change, and meeting world-class performance standards in terms of productivity, price, quality, design, and innovation.

The staff, from the CEO to the sweeper, must be increasingly disproportionately relied upon to meet these difficulties. Whether our company plans depend on innovation, scale economies, price, logistics, or marketing expertise, success can only be attained with a highly-skilled, competitive workforce worldwide. People are what drive businesses forward.

The proportion of highly skilled workers is likely to increase sharply compared to unskilled workers to satisfy sophisticated consumer preferences, meet delivery targets, offset unit labor costs, and ultimately meet price points in the marketplace. In other words, there will always be a place for low-end and intermediate skills in the sector, given the labor-intensive nature of manual work. To steer this industry towards a different development trajectory in the face of these shifts brought on by technology breakthroughs, specialized skills development interventions are required.

Reality check on the new schemes

The sad reality is that businesses in this industry are shrinking, getting meaner, and doing whatever it takes to survive. To gain market agility, large garment and textile companies are increasingly re-engineering themselves into a variety of smaller interlocking business units.

Therefore, it is typical for manufacturing companies simultaneously manufacture, import, and wholesale certain product lines.

This variety of roles is leading to more complex organizational structures in businesses and offering a wealth of new opportunities for skill development outside of the traditional leadership, apprenticeship, and technical training offerings, which is also crucial to enhancing the sector's firms' competitiveness.

To reduce costs and boost quality at every stage of the activity chain, mastery of the value chain is becoming increasingly important in all business activities. Today, a company's success or failure is determined by how quickly raw materials are moved from entering the facility until the finished product is delivered to the consumer.

For businesses to continuously reengineer structures and enhance processes in response to internal and external market changes, these imperatives call for complicated managerial talents.

As part of their everyday duties, managers must develop and oversee smooth interfaces between human resources, technology, finance, procurement, logistics, operations, marketing and sales, and customer support. Additionally, they require the ability to join global supply chains.

Various ongoing projects on skills development

Several projects and programs for skill development have been developed in the textile industry in India. 11.14 lakh people were taught in textiles and apparel, jute, spinning, weaving, technical textiles, sericulture, handloom, and handicrafts as part of the Integrated Skill Development Scheme, with 8.43 lakh of them finding employment.

Samarth's program aims to educate young people about the textile industry so they can obtain lucrative and long-term jobs. Ten lakh individuals will be taught, with nine lahks coming from the organized sector and one from the traditional industry. Thus, the system encompasses the textile value cycle.

The event's features will include textiles, handlooms, handicrafts, and carpets. As part of the skilling outreach across states, opportunities for women in tailoring at the district level will be found.

Samarth has created a few modules and courses in clothing production. In the textile industry, women make up around 75% of the workforce. The program also includes encouraging the development of the traditional jute, sericulture, handicraft, and handloom sectors.

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