b. Abandonment of the apprenticeship system in favour of the learnership system, which does not meet the industry sector needs in terms of competency and qualification standards,
c. Decline of the FET college capacity in terms of:
· relevant curriculum aligned to sector specific needs
· teacher capacity, -training, -skills
· lack of relevant equipment and machinery
· lack of substantial practical training capacity
d. Lack of articulation in the Manufacturing and Tooling Sector qualifications amongst:
· Schools
· FET colleges
· Universities of Technology, and
· Academic Universities
e. Large scale loss of the State Owned Enterprises Apprentice’s and large Business’s Apprentice Training Centres
· These centres for responsible for more than 80% of the practical competency based training of artisans in SA. Business focus and outsourcing saw the downscaling and/or closure of these facilities
· The burden for this type of training moved to FET colleges and small enterprises, which do not have the staffing and funding capacity to sustain the growing demand
f. Funding capacity focus from Government at FET college level is largely focussed on capacity building for the NCV (National Certificate Vocational) qualification, as an entry level qualification at Grade 12 equivalent (NQF4), resulting in:
· No funding capacity at FET college level for sector specific apprenticeship programmes, such as that required by the TDM sector
· The current learnership curriculum for Tool making, is inadequate above NQF level 3
· The old N-courses (N1 to N6), that supported the old Tool, Die and Jig making Apprenticeship, are no longer funded for delivery at FET college level, making it practically impossible to do the Apprenticeship
· The above apprenticeship is outdated by modern TDM sector standards
g. The migration of the responsibility for Occupational and Trade related skills development from Department of Labour to the Department of higher education in 2009, resulted in the focus shifting back towards artisan development.
h. Historically the throughput capacity on existing qualifications feeding the manufacturing sector has been very poor. Analysis of the throughput of students between 2001 and 2007 on the feeder subjects:
· Manufacturing Engineering Technology,
· Mechanical Engineering Technology, and
· Manufacturing, showed the following for 2007 :
Student Enrolment Pass Rate % Pass Rate 9334 1173 13%
This trend prevails for the period analysed. The above illustrates a clear need for improved:
· Career Guidance and Orientation,
· Student Assessment,
· Mathematics, Science and English remedial courses,
· Extended Life skills and Computer skills courses.
The above situation prompted the partnership the public private partnership between industry and government to launch the development of the TDM Sector Skills Development programme in 2006 to develop a sector specific solution to the above.
SECTOR SPECIFICATIONS
2.1 Technology Stagnation
· Lack of investment into recapitalization over the past 20 years mainly caused by the demise of the Armaments and Nuclear industries, as well as the contraction of the local manufactured content for the Automotive, Energy, Medical, Rail and Marine industries
2.2 Loss of Capacity
· The industry demand is growing driven by the Automotive, Packaging, Mining and Agro-Processing industry’s growth. The global demand for Tooling in 2009 exceeded EURO 64 billion. European tooling industry contributed EURO 14 billion (22%) of the total demand. The local demand for tooling currently peaks at around R6 billion per annum, depending on new automotive launch capacity requirements
· SA TDM industry supplies less than 20% of the local demand for tooling, largely driven by the automotive sector procuring 100% of all high specification tooling from international suppliers
· The number of TDM companies are declining, due to a lack of competitiveness and the loss of work to China and India
2.3 Loss of Competitiveness
· Loss of work to Europe, China, India and other far east countries resulting from the lack of skills availability, decline in quality standards (outdated non-competitive technology), decline in SA TDM companies ability to meet delivery capacity and timing requirements
· The lack of speciality clusters with niche market focus
· Lack of focussed applied Research and Development to support niche competencies within the sector
2.4 Absence of BBBEE transformation in TDM industry
· As a sector in distress financial institutions and investors classify industry sector as high risk, thus empowerment investment to date remains largely insignificant
· Start-up SME enterprises in the sector find it difficult/impossible to raise capital
2.5 Increasing imports – decreasing exports. Less than 20% of local demand is currently produced in SA, which has a profoundly negative effect on:
· Balance of payments
· Manufacturing competitiveness, i.e. machine setting, tooling adjustment and tool maintenance service has to be procured from international tooling supplier, that results in:
Ø plant downtime,
Ø higher scrap rates,
Ø drop in output efficiencies,
Ø quality problems,
Ø missed supply deadlines,
Ø increased input costs
Statistics released by ISTMA (International Specialized Tooling and Machining Association at the recent World Tooling Conference in Toronto, Canada, indicates that up to 50% of any manufactured component’s cost competiveness, is governed by Tooling.
South African Manufacturing Industry Competitiveness support should be facilitated through the re-development of the Tool, Die and Mould Manufacturing Sector. Development of this sector will directly support amongst others Automotive, Packaging, Mining, Beneficiation and Capital Goods based industries.
These industries will not be able to survive without the support of a competitive TDM sector. The more than 500 local Tool, Die and Mould manufacturing companies involved in local support of the manufacturing value chain from 1st to 4th tier, require the support of the initiative to reposition for survival.
