CHENNAI: The State is preparing itself to protect the job sector, amid the impact of AI and other technological interventions, aiming to safeguard one of the biggest employment generators, the MSME sector, with a specific focus on the pharmaceutical and gold and diamond industries
The State government is planning to draw 5- to 10-year transformation roadmaps. The Bureau for Facilitating MSMEs of Tamil Nadu (FaMeTN) has invited consultants to undertake separate studies for the two sectors.
The focus is also on improving productivity, technology adoption, skills, market access and sustainability.
The technology assessment would analyse how employment patterns could evolve as industries modernise. Consultants will identify jobs and job levels likely to emerge along the sectoral value chains, along with indicative compensation and skill requirements. At the same time, they will identify existing roles that could come under pressure from technological changes and examine how such jobs could be redefined.
The exercise will examine six broad dimensions — operations and productivity, digitisation, research and innovation, jobs and skills, markets and exports, and sustainability.
The studies will begin with a baseline assessment of businesses across the respective value chains. This will include mapping enterprises by size, level of formalisation, ownership, and market orientation, as well as identifying where MSMEs enter the value chain, where they add value, and where they face barriers to market access or risk exclusion.
The assessment will also map the geographical spread of businesses across districts and industrial clusters, providing a clearer picture of the sector's concentration and the role of MSMEs in different regions.
A separate assessment of the workforce will examine existing jobs, functional roles, compensation levels, qualifications and skill requirements. It will distinguish between permanent, contractual and informal employment and study the existing skilling and reskilling ecosystem, including ITIs, polytechnics, universities, private training providers and industry-led initiatives.
Technology adoption will form another key component of the exercise. Consultants will assess the use of technology in both core and non-core operations, covering production, logistics, inventory management, quality control, finance, human resources, compliance and marketing. For MSMEs, the study will specifically examine the barriers preventing wider digitisation.
Research and innovation will also be studied alongside the industry's evolving technology requirements, with the assessment examining the scope for greater adoption of new technologies and practices. Sustainability, including the sectoral implications of changing production and business practices, will form another key part of the roadmap.