Industry needs operators, not tailors, say exporters

The Indian apparel export sector could be facing a shortage of professionally trained manpower for apparel manufacturing, where productivity improving systems are still not in place. Reena Mital reports.

Apparel exports are poised to increase exponentially, but apparel exporters are wary that lack of professionally trained manpower could hamper growth to some extent.

Despite the existence of a large number of educational institutes catering to the requirements of the apparel export sector, exporters say that these focus mainly on the fashion and design aspects. “Most of the students graduating from the fashion design or fashion technology institutes join export houses as merchandisers, or become part of the design team of the export units. No one really wants to work on the shopfloor, in the manufacturing department,” says Mr Jerry John, CEO, First Textiles.

According to Mr Venu Krishnan, director, Leela Scottish Lace, “The institutes have largely failed to impart practical knowledge to the students on apparel manufacturing. The apparel manufacturing sector is facing a shortage of trained personnel. The exporters have to train the manpower as per their requirements.”

This is a problem which is being faced by Banswara Syntex, which has ventured into garment exports, and is fast expanding its trousering capacity. Says Mr R L Toshniwal, managing director, Banswara Syntex, “We are putting in a lot of effort to train our people in the right manufacturing practices to achieve certain quality levels, and reduce rejections and wastages. At this level, there is no formal education or training being offered by the institutes.”

According to Mr John, “The problems in apparel manufacturing are of productivity, cost control, high rates of rejection. All of this is because of the bad systems that are in place at most of the factories. We have tailors and not operators manufacturing the garment pieces, so the specialisation is missing. Efficient line systems are also absent in this industry. This is because of the smaller garment lots and fabrics lots. Again, garment export business in India is seasonal in nature, where line systems cannot run. And tailors are not open to working on line systems. This however, is a minor problem and the attitudes can be changed.”

Line systems can work better for units catering to the bulk orders of US buyers and big European retailers. However, a very small percentage of the garment factories in India have efficient line systems in place.

It is learnt that some exporters have started employing people from the outskirts of big towns, train them to be operators, and generally become part of the village economy. Exporters further point out the need for educating students in apparel engineering.