Maruti Suzuki to train over 2,100 annually at ITIs

Maruti Suzuki today said it will scale up its skill development projects by setting up automobile skill enhancement centres (ASEC) at 45 government-run Industrial Training Institutes across the country.

Each of these centres will be equipped with a model workshop to provide practical training. Muti will also appoint full-time trainers, provide tools and equipment and forge partnerships with local Maruti Suzuki service workshops to upgrade skills of ITI students and make them job-ready.

"This will be a Corporate Social Responsibility project of the Company" Maruti aid n a statement, adding it has committed Rs5 crore for the initiative.

Nearly 2,100 job market entrants are expected to benefit annually through these ASECs. The trainees will be free to seek employment in any workshop, including those not servicing Maruti Suzuki vehicles, it said.

Maruti's Automobile Skill Enhancement Centres are being set up in designated ITIs in Jammu, Srinagar, Patiala, Hoshiarpur, Yamuna Nagar, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Dehradun, Dewas, Durg, Jabalpur, Surat, Godhra, Ankleshwar, Kolkata, Mangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Karimnagar Vijayawada, Kochi, , Calicut, Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram among others. 

Pankaj Narula, executive director (service), Maruti Suzuki said, ''Through this initiative, Maruti Suzuki wants to contribute to the national effort for skill development and employability. With the growth in number of vehicles on roads, quality repair and maintenance offers a major employment opportunity. Automobile Skill Enhancement Centres will provide hands-on experience to trainees and make them capable of quality service and repair of vehicles.''

In addition to the ITI curriculum, the students will be given 50 days of training by MSIL trainers in areas related to car service, repairs and maintenance. Students trained at the ASECs will be awarded an additional skill training certificate.

Maruti Suzuki has two major approaches of ITI support programs  - first, adopt  ITIs and take care of its wholistic development by adopting all trades and second, a focused approach to promote automobile skill training

In the first approach, the company is working with 29 ITIs in partnership with state governments. The support provided to each ITI depends on its individual needs. In general, the Company offers support in infrastructure improvement, faculty training, exposure to manufacturing facilities, training in acclaimed Japanese work practices like 5S, kaizen and 3G and soft skills like personality development and team work

In the second approach, it creates a pool of employable youth by working intensively with students learning the automobile trade. Over 5500 youth from 88 I.T.Is have benefitted from this program so far andare employed in service workshops of Maruti Suzuki and other automobile service workshops.

Scaling up its efforts, Maruti Suzuki is setting up Automobile Skill Enhancement Centres (ASEC) at 45 Government-run Industrial Training Institutes that will train 2100 youth annually.