To provide skilled trainers and students for the manufacturing sector, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will form the Tamil Nadu Manufacturing Excellence Academy (TANME) in public-private-partnership mode by involving the State government, industry and various institutes.

Talking to The Hindu, CII-Tamil Nadu State Council Chairman, Narayan Sethuramon, said the proposed Academy would create industry-ready skilled trainers and students across the State and would also promote research to a great extent.

To be headquartered in Chennai, TANME will be headed a by a full time Chief Executive Officer.

The initial investment would be about Rs.10 crore to be shared equally by the stakeholders.

Citing Tamil Nadu’s Vision 2023 Document, Mr. Sethuramon said over the next 11 years, about 15 million fresh jobs are likely to be created across the economy, while the total number of people to be skilled afresh and re-skilled would be about 20 million. Besides, the Vision document predicted that the manufacturing sector contribution to the State’s Gross State Domestic Product to increase from the present 17 per cent to 22 per cent.

This requires the manufacturing output in the State to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of 14 per cent.

'To meet the skill gap, the Academy would train around 5,000 faculty members in three years, who in turn will train 2.50 lakh students across the State. The first course will commence by September 2014. Initially, the focus would be on coaching from Chennai and then extend it to tier-II and tier-III cities through distance learning method,' he said.

TANME will also build and operate industry vertical specific Centres of Excellence in automotive, aerospace and defence, bio-technology, textile, solar, nano-technology, petrochemical, pharma and others.

Besides, the academy would offer identified training programmes to students in contemporary industry-related subject areas, where there was industry demand as well as skill shortage.

This would include facility management, product design, supply chain, industrial automation, production planning, materials management, virtual manufacturing and India specific production planning systems.