Too much training is shoddy and not good enough to maintain Britain as a globally competitive manufacturing power, it has been claimed.
Alan Begg, chief executive of the Automotive Academy, said the provision of training was patchy as the country faced a demographic timebomb.
In future years the number of well trained employees - on the shop floor and in the boardroom - would run out as older people with the required skills retired. Meanwhile urgent action was needed to replace them otherwise British industry faced a bleak future, he warned.
He said the Automotive Academy, which has its head office in Birmingham, would work on delivering globally competitive training materials and ensure the supply of training courses and trainers met the demand.
Speaking at the House of Commons yesterday, Mr Begg said: "We are very disappointed with the standards of existing trainers. Since we set up more than 300 trainers have passed through our hands and only a handful met our standards. We are going to train them to be better trainers so they can deliver programmes successfully."
Joe Greenwell, chairman of the academy and a vice president at Ford, said: "We have found training that is not focused on the quite clearly defined needs of the automotive supply chain.
"We have found trainers who are insufficiently skilled or who are out of touch with the latest tools and techniques and we have found training courses which literally just pay lip service to what should be in-depth skill development.
"They just tick the boxes. Obviously, therefore, upgrading the capacity and capability of the training providers needed to be a major priority and by the end of this year we will have put 300 trainers and assessors through upskilling packages."
Mr Begg said the Academy was on course to oversee a seven fold increase in the number of programmes it oversees, from 1,000 a year to 7,000 by the end of 2007.
He said this was possible because the Academy does not train people itself, but oversees and supports in-house and college-based schemes run by firms. "It is part of gaining confidence from the benefits you get in training.
"I think there's been a tendency in manufacturing to do what's cheapest and easiest rather than what has been the best. There is a massive range in what is being offered. There are some schemes like Nissan in Sunderland which are truly world class, but in some of the companies, particularly the small ones there will be some people who have no training at all."
