A new innovation-driven mindset about skills development in South Africa will be imperative to realise the goals of the National Development Plan. The NDP aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030. Addressing the 14th World Conference of the International Special Tooling and Machining Association (ISTMA) in Cape Town, Dirk van Dyk – a director of the Intsimbi National Tooling Initiative – a multi- stakeholder intervention in the Tool, Die and Mould manufacturing (TDM) sector of SA – said South Africa could realise the aims of the NDP by drawing on the energies and capacity of the country’s people and by growing an inclusive economy. “South Africa will, however, have to overcome serious challenges with regards to future economic growth and job creation. The country currently contributes less than 0.7% of the world’s manufacturing GDP while half of the country’s youth are unemployed,” says Van Dyk.
He emphasises that manufacturing needs to be the main driver of economic growth in South Africa over the next two decades if the country wants to turn the current dire unemployment situation around. South Africa will, however only be able to effectively stimulate manufacturing growth if it can successfully produce the new generation skills sets that are compatible with the manufacturing environment of the future.
“The reality is that only countries and companies that can attract, develop and maintain the highest skilled talent will show significant growth in manufacturing in the future. South Africa suffers a critical skills shortage despite a high unemployment rate and the country’s emerging economy therefore needs to take a “hard look” at all aspects of its manufacturing capabilities,” says Van Dyk.
He pointed out that globally manufacturing is changing due to growing information technology and virtual reality deployment, the use of more advanced materials and processes, higher levels of automation, shorter lead times, higher output efficiencies, green/environmental constraints and new modes of communication. “This changing environment requires more diverse skills sets from engineers, technicians and artisans,” says Van Dyk.
With reference to skills development, Van Dyk says traditional in-house training programmes have become too expensive and that the manufacturing industry will in future require “Just-in-time” or “Plug and Play” employees that already have the required work skills, proficiencies and abilities demanded by the job. The focus will increasingly be placed on higher end skills as technology will make the manufacturing environment eventually a totally programmable system.
Van Dyk says a number of new drivers of change of future work skills are now coming into play. These are computational impact, the rise of smart machines, increasing human longevity – changing the nature of learning and careers- a new media ecology, superstructured organisations and globalisation. He emphasized that in order to succeed, the future workforce will need key skills such as the ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed, social intelligence – the ability to connect to others, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions, novel and adaptive thinking, cross cultural competencies and computational thinking or the ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts. The skilled employee of the future will also have to be new media literate and transdisciplinary with the ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines.
They must be equipped with a design mindset and the ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. They will need cognitive load management or the ability to discriminate and filter information for importance and understanding. Optimum cognitive functioning and virtual collaboration with the ability to work productively, drive engagement and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team will also be key pre-requisites of the skilled employee of the future.
Van Dyk says if the South African manufacturing sector wants to successfully develop the required skills for future growth and competitiveness, the sector needs to focus on the early attraction of talent as required by every manufacturing discipline. Manufacturing should furthermore put a high premium on sector specific investment through multiple entry point systems, modular qualification structures, full articulation between artisan, technician and engineering training, continuous incremental development, industry driven standards, sector driven demand planning and the effective warehousing of “work-ready” candidates. “Without a critical examination and an innovative approach to future skills development in the manufacturing sector the closing of the skills gap is unlikely and significant growth and global competitiveness will remain a pipedream,” says Van Dyk.
