JAKARTA - The Ministry of Industry is encouraging small and medium industries (IKM) to implement the use of industrial technology 4.0 to spur productivity and competitiveness. This is in line with the Making Indonesia 4.0 priority program, with its main goal being to make Indonesia among the 10 countries that have the strongest economy in the world by 2030.
"We are encouraging that the palm sugar IKM sector can implement industry 4.0. This is done to improve the efficiency of the palm sugar production process," said Director General of Small, Medium and Various Industries (IKMA) Gati Wibawaningsih in Jakarta, Wednesday (24/6).
Gati said, her party through the Directorate of Food, Wooden Goods and Furniture SMEs sought to make one of the palm sugar producing cooperatives in Banyumas Regency, the Koperasi Nira Satria as an example of the IKM sector that would implement industrial technology 4.0. This effort was carried out in stages starting from the construction of information systems, support for supporting facilities, to assistance.
The output of the industry 4.0 implementation at Koperasi Nira Satria, among others, is traceability from the level of collectors to cooperatives as well as making several website-based applications on palm sugar business processes such as sugar data input, information systems, export data records, and export business predictions.
Furthermore, sugar based on coconut sugar or palm sugar is a commodity that has a high export value and continues to increase, namely in 2017 palm sugar exports reached 25 thousand tons with a value of US$ 42.6 million and in 2018 palm sugar exports increased to 35 thousand tons with a value of US$ 52.5 million. (LM)