At a time when layoff fear seems to be prevalent across industries, the Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology (CIPET) is designing innovative courses in order to provide the right talent to the plastic industry. The institute, which runs graduate and post graduate programs in plastics engineering at high learning centres like Ahmedabad, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai and Lucknow, is also trying its best to increase its intake capacity to meet industry requirements.
According to S K Nayak, director general of CIPET, the institute is set to design innovative courses in various disciplines of plastics engineering and technology like product design, plastics mould technology, plastics processing, testing and quality control. "The discipline specific CIPET's courses are industry oriented with lot of practical exposure in an industry environment, which help industries in getting right type of human resources, who can be directly entrusted responsibility of supervising and managing the technical operations in the respective areas of tool room, product design centres, plastics processing or manufacturing, testing and quality control, maintenance, R&D, and application development," said Nayak.
To increase its intake capacity, CIPET is also developing specific centres as technology schools in different areas of plastics engineering and technology including mould design and development, precision machining and CNC machining centre, plastics processing centres with capability to process high performance and speciality polymers.
The plastics industry in India has pegged a turnover of Rs 85,000 crores and export value of about US $ 3.5 billion. "The plastics consumption is about six million tonnes and is likely to cross 10 million tonnes by 2011-12. At a growth rate of 12 per cent, the industry's manpower requirement is also growing simultaneously which is where institutes like CIPET come into play," said Nayak.
Among other initiatives, CIPET is also spearheading tie-ups between the institute and industry associations like Plastindia Foundation, AIPMA, Indian Plastics Federation (IPF), and Gujarat State Plastics Manufacturers Association (GSPMA) for conducting courses jointly through a public private partnership (PPP) mode either at 15 CIPET centres or at industry concentrated locations in the country.