Editors Choice

Skill Development for Food Processing Sector — Wanted, a “PPP” Model

What Infosys is doing for IT sector must be emulated in the food manufacturing sector also to create a pool of exceptionally bright talent which can help the industry to upgrade their technical manpower very significantly, writes V H Potty.

Infosys Technologies Limited, a IT giant, is a pioneer in skill development as far as IT sector is concerned and their ‘campus connect’ programme, started in the year 2004 is indeed unique. The concept is based on the need to expand the skill base of students being trained by the average teaching institutions. In less than 5 years, Infosys was able to knit together over 500 engineering colleges in India as well as in other countries like Malaysia, China and Mexico through a well planned exposure program that helped about 58000 students and 3000 faculty members to upgrade their skills vis-a-vis IT industry and its operations. The modusoperandi consists of training of students through lectures and seminars, industry visits, on-hand training, interacting with peers and exposure to world class infrastructure and governance. Similarly faculty members were also provided with opportunities to imbibe industry culture so that their perception and knowledge base is significantly improved making them much superior teachers. Such private-public alliance between the private industry and public institutions (PPP) is laudable and has the potential to create tremendous impact at the national level as the graduates coming out of the universities become more versatile with practical outlook.

What Infosys is doing for IT sector must be emulated in the manufacturing sector also to create a pool of exceptionally bright talent which can help the industry to upgrade their technical manpower very significantly. There could be practical constraints to design such a system in the manufacturing sector as is being done in IT industry because of logistical difficulties. Manufacturing involves deployment of complex facilities like specialized equipment and supporting services for which extensive infrastructure is necessary and there are very few such industries in the food sector which can boast of a world class processing facility. But even if a few of them like Britannia, Nestle, ITC, MTR Foods, Coca Cola, Pepsi can pool their resources it should be possible to create a system like the one Infosys was able to do it.

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