Skill Formation in Malaysia.

Skill Formation in Malaysia. 2003. Penerbit UKM: Bangi. ISBN 967-942-601-7 (paperback). 180 pp. RM 30.00. Yuri Sadoi.

This book examines the auto parts industry in Malaysia in order to understand the difficulties a developing country faces in promoting skill formation. The Malaysian government has promoted automobile production and its supporting industries by giving tax benefits and tariff protection through a national car project. Despite a history of over a decade, the technical capability of workers in the Malaysian auto mobile industry is still low, although there has been an increase in the local content. The increase of the local content is often taken as an indicator of the progress of the Malaysian auto mobile industry, but it has been brought about largely by importing machines that handle difficult production processes for parts production. Auto parts production requires a wide range of skills. Automobile production, which requires over 30 000 parts, depends very much on parts production. Malaysia currently cannot produce all the required parts. By looking at the imported parts, this book asks why their production cannot be localized and pin-points the necessary techniques and skills for their production. The analysis of imported parts highlights the three major problems Malaysia faces, lack of technical competence in such processing techniques as forging and precision machining; the low designing capability of parts makers; and requirement of scale merit.

YURI SADOI, Ph.D. is an affiliat fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden, the Netherlands. She received her Ph.D in Human and Environmental Studies at Kyoto University, Japan in 1999. She has co-edited Production Networks in Asia and Europe: Skill Formation and Technology Transfer in the Automobile Industry London: Routledge (2003).

Published by:

Penerbit UKM

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

43600, Bangi, Selangor,

Malaysia.

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