Maruti facilitates 3-year engineering diploma for shopfloor technicians

17 July, 2012: Maruti Suzuki India has announced a special higher education scheme for its shopfloor technicians. The carmaker has signed an MoU with HSBTE (Haryana State Board of Technical Education) and HISCET (Haryana-IGNOU Society for Community Education and Training) to offer a three- year diploma in engineering to its shopfloor technicians. The programme titled ‘Gyanuday’ will help make available manpower with enhanced knowledge and skill-set for meeting the future business needs of the company. The company will support the programme by subsidising 50 percent of the fee, and offering an interest-free loan of the balance 50 percent to meritorious shopfloor technicians.

The MoU was signed by K K Kataria, Additional Secretary from HSBTE, Mukesh Chadha, Member Secretary from HISCET, and Rajesh Uppal, executive director (IT), Maruti Suzuki India. Also, present on the occasion were senior state government dignitaries including Dhanpat Singh, Principal Secretary-Technical Education Department, Haryana and Dr Avtar Singh, Director General-Technical Education, Haryana and several senior officials from HISCET and HSBTE. Maruti Suzuki top management was represented by S Y Siddiqui, Chief Operating Officer (Administration) and M M Singh, Chief Operating Officer (Production).

Commenting on the merits of the initiative, S Y Siddiqui said, “This is a unique initiative, the first of its kind in the industry, where shopfloor employees can acquire an engineering qualification. Usually, higher education opportunities are offered at executive level in corporates. This initiative will address the career aspirations of the technician colleagues and is also a significant move to align with the national skill upgradation programme to create a pool of trained and skilled manpower.”

Explaining the benefits, M M Singh added, “We see this higher education programme as a positive engagement opportunity with our colleagues at the shopfloor. With this initiative, the company has taken a long-term career progression view of shopfloor technicians. A special team was set up internally to study the demand of industry and the course was designed around those specific manufacturing needs. This is a capability building exercise for technicians at Maruti Suzuki and we are confident many people would benefit from this special initiative. Going ahead, Gyanuday will help us build a talent pool of supervisors for the company’s future expansion needs.”

As is well known, India faces a chronic skills shortage in manpower for the automotive industry and a host of OEMs have taken to developing their own captive skilled manpower in association with ITIs and technical institutes.