A good yarn

Summit Wool Spinners was one of the first companies to use and develop effective workplace assessment practices for the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) qualifications. Not only has the company maintained its staff training momentum for eight years, it will now be amongst the first in the industry to offer new cadetships and the National Diploma of Textiles to its staff.

In the mid-1990s Summit was part of an NZQA pilot project called "Company Use" which was set up to explore ways in which the NQF could be useful to companies within their existing human resource procedures.

The Summit factory is a 24-hour-a-day operation spinning and carding wool for use in products such as carpets.

NZQA staff began working with Summit staff in 1995 to develop effective workplace assessment practices for NQF qualifications. Within a year productivity had increased, workers were more skilled and motivated, and 96 per cent of them were hooked onto the NQF under the voluntary training programme - all this and no down-time for the factory.

Eight years on the company has put all 250 production staff through the appropriate unit standards and is moving on to workplace training at Diploma level.

The cadetships will take four years and will be offered to new as well as existing staff. Staff will be able to do all training while still working, enabling them to avoid expensive student loans.

Summit Wool Spinners director Don Fraser said the company was an enthusiastic supporter of training initiatives and had been heavily involved in the development of the cadetships and the Diplomas. The qualifications were a joint project between the Ministry of Economic Development and the Apparel and Textile Industry Training Organisation.

"We have also invested significant amounts of time and money into these proposals and believe very strongly in them," Mr Fraser said.

Textile industry training group convener Ian Barbour said the new programmes had come about because of an increasing skill shortage in the industry, which would become more acute as many skilled people approached retirement age in the next five to ten years.

Mr Barbour said the carpet and yarn manufacturing industries had experienced strong growth during the past decade, which could continue only if enough skilled people joined the industry.

"There is a need to revitalise the industry, to lift skills to the levels needed in a modern, internationally competitive manufacturing operation and to promote the industry as a desirable career choice," he said.