One of the challenges facing the manufacturing industry in South Africa is the drastic skills shortage, which has a great impact on sustainability. This shortage is critic- ally felt in the foundries, forges and die-casting industry, which is considered the backbone of the manufacturing industry.

To deal with this challenge, the National Tooling Initiative Programme (NTIP), in conjunction with the Toolmaking Association of South Africa and the Department of Trade and Industry, is undertaking the first Tool, Die and Moulding (TDM) Powered Preapprentice Orientation programme, in seven pilot sites around the country, including Gauteng province.

The programme seeks to boost the TDM sector with the comprehensive training of new candidates, which is geared to increase South Africa’s competitiveness. The programme envisions training enough people to sustain and boost local manufacturing for the future. The programme further aims to rehabilitate the industry and create thousands of jobs in the province by 2014.

NTIP CEO Dirk van Dyk says that the local TDM industry supplies about R1,9-billion worth of products and services to the manufacturing sector, which uses about R6-billion of TDM products yearly. This means that the local TDM sector is producing far below the needs of the local manufacturing sector, and net imports are higher than R5-billion.

He says that the Gauteng Tooling Initiative is critical to achieving the province’s yearly economic growth target of about 8% by 2014. Gauteng accounts for about 60% of national tooling production capacity. It is expected that this initiative will be one of the drivers of growth in exports for sectors, such as advanced manufacturing.

The NTIP is a concerted effort to boost an industry that lies at the core of the manufacturing sector. The tooling industry is intrinsically linked to the need for significant skills development, small, medium-sized and microenterprise (SMME) growth, manufacturing sector competitiveness and South Africa’s national growth strategy. The NTIP has launched aseries of programmes to revive and boost tooling, moulding and die making in the country.

Van Dyk explains that tooling is not about making hammers, chisels and screwdrivers. “It is really about making high-tech equipment that is used in one way or another by the entire manufacturing sector. Factories cannot produce anything without the right gear and tools to manufacture their pro-ducts,” he says.

South Africa’s tooling sector needs revival as it has been dwindling for some years under the combined effects of more factories importing their gear, skills erosion and lack of enterprise development.

The TDM Powered Preapprentice Orienta-tion programme has 25 candidates under its wing at each of the seven schools in the pilot project. Van Dyk says that the programme is unique in South Africa, as it is outcomes based. “Many artisans become demotivated, because there are so many discrepancies between the different technical college qualifications. The technical qualifications have been much too theoretical,” he says.

“We are introducing a new programme from America to fast-track the qualification of artisans. Manufacturing techniques remain the same worldwide, so there is no need to spend time reinventing the wheel by developing new training programmes locally.”

He says that the new programme will enable candidates to demonstrate their skills. If a skilled person can complete the industry competence test, a person is able to fast-track his or her training. The NTIP’s training is experi- ence based, and does not rely as heavily on theoretical work as courses in the past may have done. But, if a person needs more time, there is no time limit to completing the course.

The programme consists of an entry level, a basic training level, a master artisan level and, eventually, an engineering qualification. Van Dyk believes that not enough marketing is done at school level to encourage careers as artisans.

The NTIP has managed to establish six provincial offices to assist in coordinating the initiative’s efforts on a regional scale.

believes one of the keys to develop- ing local expertise and SMMEs is to introduce the concept of clustering toolmaking com- panies, which means that different companies work together on one project, producing the different components individually. Tool- making clusters were first pioneered in Taiwan and Portugal and can be accomplished on a micro, medium-size or global scale, as is the case with the Airbus A380 airplane. “Com- panies must understand that, to mature, they need to start to cooperate and not compete with each other,” Van Dyk says.

Meanwhile, the NTIP is working on establishing a microcluster of toolmakers to possibly manufacture components in Gauteng province for a new model of Ford vehicle by 2016. In KwaZulu-Natal, another example of a microcluster, consisting of three or four companies, is producing dies and tooling for the motoring industry.

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