National College has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the BHEL Small and Medium Industries Association (BHELSIA) to offer a diploma course in Factory Management.
The MoU was signed here on Friday by K. Anbarasu, principal, National College, and Rajappa Rajkumar, president, BHELSIA, in the presence of A.V. Krishnan, Executive Director, BHEL, Tiruchi complex. The course content includes three major components – office management, labour laws, and English proficiency.
The course was intended to tide over the manpower shortage faced by the member units of BHELSIA and the industry at large. Faculty members of the college, and experts from the industry would handle the classes.
Inaugurating the programme, Mr. Krishnan said that apart from producing trained managers for the industry, the course would help in fostering budding entrepreneurs. While production was the core activity of any company, labour, office, inventory, and safety managements have to be handled properly to ensure the success of business.
The industry in Tiruchi, which has emerged as hub of power plant equipment manufacturing in the country, required trained technical and managerial manpower to meet the changing business environment, and the course would help meet the demand, he observed.
Mr.Rajkumar said given the BHEL's rising output and growth rate, the ancillary units were facing shortage of manpower, both technical and managerial. As of now, the ancillary units required about 6,000 additional trained manpower. The BHELSIA was addressing the issue by conducting such programmes in collaboration with educational institutions, he added.
Mr. Anbarasu said this was the second MoU signed between the college and BHELSIA. The college was already offering a diploma course in fabrication engineering under the previous MoU. Though the diploma in fabrication engineering was started under the self-financing stream, the University Grants Commission has approved it as a career oriented programme and granted Rs.10 lakh for conducting it. The college was hopeful of getting the UGC approval for the factory management course too, he said.
V. Selvaraj, Joint Chief Inspector of Factories, and K. Raghunathan, college secretary, spoke.
