In a major initiative to upgrade the Indian leather footwear industry, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) is cooperating with the leather footwear cluster in Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and the Indian Shoe Federation (ISF) as its partner under UNIDO’s Consolidated Project for SME (small and medium enterprises) Development in India, funded by the Government of Italy. The broad objectives of the three-year project are to enhance the global competitiveness of Indian micro, small and medium footwear enterprises by improving their access to finance and technology; attract larger inflow of investment and technology into the sector; improve skills and managerial efficiency through training and capacity building; and foster business partnerships with India.

Under the innovative “cluster twinning” component of the project aimed at creating institutional and long-term relationships between footwear manufacturers of India and Italy, training programmes were conducted by Italian experts in the factories of the cluster members in Chennai in 2008 in best manufacturing practices, productivity and quality. This training directly benefited production managers of 23 MSMEs of the Chennai footwear cluster located in Ambur, Ranipet, Vellore, Chennai, Pondicherry, Vanyamvadi and Sriperumbudur as well as the local training institutes in the leather sector such as the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI), Central Footwear Training Institute (CFTI), and Indian Institute of Leather Products (IILP). Training was thereafter organized in Italy in which 14 MSMEs from Chennai participated along with representatives of 3 training institutes, providing them with a unique learning opportunity in the most advanced clusters in Italy in footwear manufacturing, besides also exposure to Italy’s famous footwear exhibitions – LINEAPPLE and SIMAC 08 in Bologna.

The participants shared their experiences at a workshop on “Best Practices in Footwear Manufacturing – The Italian Experience”, jointly organized by UNIDO and ISF in Chennai on 5 December 2008. Mr. Aqeel Ahmed, President of ISF, addressed the workshop and Mr. Bruno Valanzuolo, Chief Technical Adviser, UNIDO, gave a presentation on the impact of the intervention and the road ahead. As many as 15 representatives from the industry and different institutions, who had undergone training under the project both in Tamil Nadu and Italy, shared their experiences.

The workshop revealed that the initiative had achieved its objectives both at enterprise and institutional level as follows:
1. Giving an opportunity to members of ISF to introspect their own gaps and the need for change as well as to understand the way forward to implement their upgradation programmes;
2. Improved industry-institution linkages;
3. A vision to foster a paradigm shift from their present practices to more competitive ones in order to meet the global challenges;
4. An opportunity to network with their Italian counterparts and explore business linkages for twinning of strengths and weaknesses of both clusters;
5. Capitalizing on the competitive advantages and jointly exploring third world markets; and
6. Adopting sustainable development activities for the larger benefit of ISF members, bearing in mind the need for a medium to long-term implementation time horizons and the important role that ISF has to play to ensure sustainability and ultimate ownership of the current initiatives.

This would translate into an 18 months action plan with measurable objectives from ISF to realize the vision of the project on a long-term basis.

Source: http://www.unido.org