The Indian Manufacturing Industry is one that has seen exponential growth over the past years, with a projected capacity to export 1 trillion USD worth of goods by 2030. This tremendous growth accounting for 17% of the nation’s GDP can be attributed to government policies, such as the National Manufacturing Policy, Production-Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI), increase in the foreign direct investment, robust domestic demand, and changes in global supply chain on the backdrop of Covid pandemic. Indian manufacturing is emerging as very competitive, reliable, and consistent industry on the world map, which is also expanding into new areas of aviation, defense, electronics, and precision manufacturing.

Fast paced technological advancements and culture of innovation are the driving factors for the surge in manufacturing activities however, availability of “Skilled Manpower” is emerging as one of the restraining factors or critical issue to keep up the momentum.

While analyzing the scenario about the availability of skilled manpower and industry requirements, we came across a stark reality of skewed gender ratio 7:1 of male to female employment in manufacturing industry (Based on a survey in 2021, the manufacturing industry of India employs a workforce of 27.3 million- of which, only 12% are women) Which is certainly not the case with Indian IT, Banking or any other IT/ITES service industry.

2023: A Tidal Influx of Women in the Indian Manufacturing Industry

One can really understand the low participation of the women in manufacturing due to hard physical work, shift workings, strenuous work environment, unavailability of basic hygiene infrastructure, family commitments, safety, and security issues in earlier days.

However, with new, clean, and neat greenfield production centers with latest technological advancements within a hygienic and safe work environment, we strongly feel the tides are shifting.

Now, the shopfloors have evolved, and the manufacturing industry is no longer a daunting environment for a woman to work in:

• The work environment is safer, cleaner, and more conducive.
• Manufacturing infrastructure is more advanced with less emphasis on heavy machinery operation.
• Flexible locations and timings allow women to have a better work-life balance and focus on their families without compromising on work.
• Women are open to relocation.
• The gender gap in education has been significantly bridged.

Most corporates in India have recognized the importance of bringing women workforce into the fold of the Manufacturing space for the sector to further grow- a phenomenon which has very successful precedence in the growth of the Banking and IT sectors.

Special emphasis is given by corporates to mobilizing women for programs, keeping gender-specific issues in mind as they are more vulnerable to social exploitation, lack opportunities and have inherently low work participation rates.

This, however, brings us to a critical juncture- a vast untapped female workforce is vying to enter the skilled manufacturing industry, all of whom need to be technically trained to achieve their full potential. It is indeed a mammoth task, and that is exactly where SkillSonics comes into the picture.

SkillSonics: Leading Gender Diversity in Manufacturing

SkillSonics has been working in the skill-development sector for a decade now and have focused on training novices and upskilling the existing skilled workforce in various domains of the vast manufacturing industry.

In the past 3 years, SkillSonics has been championing the cause of gender diversity in manufacturing. SkillSonics has been leading a multitude of successful projects and drives that help more and more women enter the industry armed with the necessary technical skills and knowledge to thrive.

Our experience in recent ambitious projects has given us completely different understanding about today’s young girls with aspiration and dreams. Our learnings after sourcing, training, and deploying thousands of girls are the stories courage, aspirations, commitment to make it big in the traditionally male dominated arena.

Today’s young generation of girls are ready to travel, shift the base location, ready to work in the shifts and willing to be equal partners in growth of Indian manufacturing success stories.

Skill Development & Employability Programs for Women Promoting Aspirational Livelihoods

We strongly believe that more participation of the girls on the shop floor will really help in easing out the critical issue of availability of skilled manpower and bring in much more value in terms of discipline, enhance productivity and more importantly empowering the families.
We at SkillSonics are pleased to bring you snapshot of our work and our own success stories for the industry to practice, improvise and innovate in near future.

Snapshot: Brief Summary of Facts and Figures

Trained Numbers: 7500+ Girls trained in technical trades.
Education Level: 12th Pass/Diploma / B.E.
Domains: CNC/Mechatronics/Electrical/Electronic Assembly/Robotic Simulation in Manufacturing/ Building Information Modelling/Electric Vehicle /Solar PV system/ Machine Learning
Placements: With large multinational corporates
Geographical Coverage: Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Maharashtra.

SkillSonics: Leading Gender Diversity in Manufacturing

Intervention 1: Worked with a leading global conglomerate for their Precision Manufacturing Unit
Mandate: Source, Train & Deploy 2000+ Girls on shop floor in Assembly domain.

SkillSonics Role:

• Impact Sourcing, Prescreening from varied geographies.
• One-month -long extensive residential technical training program at 6-8 COE’s.
• 99% Placements.

Highlights:

• 18-year-old 12th pass girls are working on shop floor in large numbers.
• Travelled 1000+ Kms from completely different geographies & now working in completely different environment of language, food habits & culture.

Intervention 2: Collaborated with a Food Processing retail giant, in their Spice factory in Guntur, to train and mobilize women with the necessary technical skills to dominate in the arena. Sourced, Trained & placed 120+ Candidates with Residential Training program.
Intervention 3: Trained and certified 100+ village women from Odisha as Plumbing Technicians to provide them with a sustainable livelihood.
Intervention 4: Source, trained and placed, 100+ women in CNC and Mechatronics at a manufacturing plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu.
Intervention 5: Trained 5000+ women, across projects, including in the highly technical arenas of Precision Manufacturing, CNC, Robotic Simulation, Electric Vehicle manufacturing and so on.

Bridging the Gender Gap on the Shopfloors is a Core Mission of SkillSonics

SkillSonics strongly believes that the solution to the skill shortage being faced by the growing Indian manufacturing industry is to increase women’s participation in the sector and aims to conduct more projects and programs in 2023, and onwards, to bridge the gender gap in the Manufacturing Industry.

One of SkillSonics’ core missions in 2023 is to ensure more and more women enter the shopfloors equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge, and have their way paved towards aspirational careers with social and economic stability.

We at SkillSonics are fortunate to have industry partners to believe in our capabilities to deliver to their expectations on the road-less-traveled of Gender Equality in the Manufacturing shop floor.

Armed with challenging experience and critical learnings, Skillsonics is ready for more such projects from organizations which are exploring the ways and means of bringing more and more women workforce on the shop floor and create a highly productive work environment.