Can India beat China in manufacturing is a question that’s raised by many top officials in India. I think it’s possible if India makes goods as durable as those made by Americans.
There’s hardly any leeway when it comes to errors in manufacturing. So quality control plays a crucial role in manufacturing in India. Unless you belittle the quality control, it’s not a difficult task to accomplish.
Most of the manufacturing happens in big plants. They are erected by the multinational companies themselves. What matters to India is the training part.
Apprenticeship is a great way to hone one’s talent. Every bachelor level undergraduate can undergo some kind of apprenticeship for at least 6 months to be trained on a particular machine or even a particular programming language.
The apprenticeship not only makes you great at your job, but it also makes you learn the culture. It takes about 6 months to get that in your system. If you only try to give a lecture for about a week on culture, I don’t think it works that great.
Indians need to think in the long term as far as their employment is concerned. Why jump every 2 years, when you can enjoy the comfort of doing a similar job in the same company for at least 5 years. The salary raises should match the market. That’s HR’s job. And also a job of that multinational company.
Jobhopping, lack of attention to details, and lack of commitment to do the same job again and again, will harm the quality of the products. Especially the high-end products like iPhones and F-16s, etc.
India needs to send the manufactured products to nations like the USA, UK, and Canada. These people are used to an extreme quality of products. It’s only when you prove yourself with iPhones and F-16s that you can manufacture for Boeing 737 and Space Shuttles.
We hope Indians don’t always run for the Gold. Most of them, realistically, need to invest their energies in these nicely paying manufacturing jobs where the money is the same as that of the software jobs.