Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of
Master of Technology: Fashion at the Durban University of Technology, 2014. / Over the past 20 years, it has become necessary for South African clothing
companies to raise their operational standards to keep up with international
competitiveness. Consequently, it was necessary for companies to invest in
technology to improve turnaround time, a case in point being computer-aided
design (CAD) pattern-making technology.
However, currently, a skills
shortage exists in the area of trained CAD pattern-makers. Therefore, the
intention of this study was to address the skills shortage of CAD pattern-
makers in the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) clothing industry. A concurrent-nested
mixed-methods research method was carried out within a constructivist
worldview. These methods were used to, firstly, establish what skills are
necessary for CAD pattern-making, and, secondly, to identify the reasons for
the skills shortage of CAD pattern-makers in the KZN clothing industry.
Different role players from the clothing industry participated in the study. The
participants indicated that CAD pattern-making requires a diverse set of
skills, which they ranked in order of importance. These skills can now be
used as a guide by lecturers, trainers and clothing companies to identify
individuals with the required potential to be trained as CAD pattern-makers.
The reasons identified by the industry participants for the skills shortage of
CAD pattern-makers, needs to be addressed through education, training and
remuneration. Since companies have purchased the necessary CAD
software, without skilled pattern-makers, the system is underutilized, thereby
affecting their profitability and costing the companies reduced profit margins.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:dut/oai:localhost:10321/1329 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Coetzee, Minette |
| Contributors | Kadwa, Farida, Pratt, Deirdre Denise |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 178 p |
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