Coimbatore will be one of the cities to get a Centre of Excellence that the State government is developing under hub and spoke model. A group of micro unit owners here recently visited Chennai to get an introduction about the centres.
An official of the District Industries Centre (DIC) told The Hindu the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) had developed three Centres of Excellence, each at an investment of ₹50 crore to ₹60 crore, jointly with multi-national companies. Each industry was a pioneer in a specific field and the Centres of Excellence would offer services to MSMEs in these areas. These Centres of Excellence were hubs and smaller centres of these (spokes) would be set up in different cities. Coimbatore was all set to get one such centre and there were demands for more.
In order to create awareness about the Centres of Excellence, the State government is organising meetings for industries in batches of 25 people for each batch. A special two-day meeting was organised in Chennai recently for 25 micro and small-scale entrepreneurs from Coimbatore. They learnt more about latest technologies such as robotics.
While one spoke centre was approved for Coimbatore, there was a possibility for two more, jointly with some of the industrial associations here. “We can propose two more centres,” the official said.
These spoke centres wouldl focus on upskilling, make latest technologies available to the MSMEs, and enable industries to develop new designs. For instance, micro or small-scale units would not explore possibilities in robotics fearing the cost involved. But, the Centres of Excellence had shown that robotics could be adopted even by micro or smaller units at an affordable cost. The ultimate aim was to take industry 4.0 to micro units, the official said.
